Caledon Back In The News

But it has little to do with homegrown terrorists but rather is shaping up to be a Christians and Lions event........let's see how the justice system deals with this dispute.

Caledon land fight heads to court
Long-time title holder who has been paying the taxes on the 5-acre parcel and the large Christian youth complex that uses it are locked in a fractious dispute
March 28, 2007
Jim Wilkes
Staff Reporter

A woman is finally heading to court to hold onto a choice piece of Caledon land that a Christian children's charity claims is theirs.

In one corner is Eleanor George de Peña, who now lives in Mexico but was raised on 150 acres in the Caledon hills bought by her parents, Annie and Thomas George, in the 1950s. They sold most of the land after her father's death, but held onto five acres for a future family retreat.

In the other corner is Teen Ranch, which runs a sprawling multimillion-dollar complex for young people on Highway 10 south of Orangeville – complete with hockey arena, lodges and stables – on 145 acres adjacent to the George land, which it bought in 1969 from a subsequent owner.

A sticky point is a huge communications tower erected by Bell Mobility in 1989 on the George land. Bell has been paying rent to Teen Ranch for placing the tower there. Teen Ranch has also been collecting lease payments from another company for allowing it to place cellular devices on the tower.

Even though the tower sits on George land, the family hasn't received a penny from the lease arrangements.

So legal claims and cross-claims have been flying back and forth in recent weeks – none of which have been proven in court – with all sides in the action pointing fingers at each other.

Much of the case hangs on a Teen Ranch claim that it should be given title to the smaller piece of land because it planted 2,000 trees on the site and that no one from the George family has used the property for more than 10 years.

In legal language, it's called "adverse possession." It means that someone who uses your land for an extended period of time can claim it as their own if you don't complain or use it yourself.

Eleanor George de Peña sees it differently. "Teen Ranch is trying to steal our land with fancy legal terms," the 60-year-old mother of four said yesterday from her home in Mexico, where she settled after marrying in the mid-1970s.

"There's nothing Christian about that."

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