Watershed protection guide   (Page 2 of 3)

Take action to protect the watershed near your home with these steps

By Anne Casselman

Photo: Janene Holman

3. THE PEN IS JUST AS MIGHTY AS THE PADDLE

Brooks may burble and lakeshores may lap, but our waters are mute where it really matters: in our courts, legislation and Parliament. “One part of us loves our water. It’s in our mythology, it’s in our history, it’s in our music,” says Maude Barlow, national chairperson of the Council of Canadians and one of the country’s leading water advocates. Yet we don’t take good care of our water, she continues, “and that schizophrenia is a problem because our so-called love of water doesn’t translate into good law.” Witness the stale 40-year-old Canada Water Act or the loophole in the federal Fisheries Act that can allow pristine lakes to be used as tailings ponds by mining corporations. Barlow doesn’t hesitate to throw down the gauntlet: “My challenge to Canadians is this: if you really love Canada’s water, you’ve got to work to protect it.”

Not that you need to become a hard-core activist to foment big-picture change. “The idea that you need to hang off a building with a protest sign to make your point is not the case at all,” says John Bennett, executive director of Sierra Club Canada. “It’s much simpler to communicate than that.” Call up your MP or municipal councillor. Write a letter. Demonstrate your personal commitment to an issue in a manner befitting your comfort zone. And, above all, know that we all have “a right to care,” as Barlow puts it.

“The world is a different place than it was in 1970, when I left high school,” says Bennett. “The skies aren’t grey and cloudy in every industrial city in North America anymore, and a lot of rivers have come back. And it was environmentalists who demanded change.” Yes, our rivers roar and rage, but the onus is on us to give them a voice loud enough to be heard by the policy-makers who decide their fate.

4. WATER IS OUR CULTURE

We are a nation of water lovers and embrace that fact in many ways. “Canadians play in it, sail on it, paddle it, dive into it, skate on it, fish it and drink it,” says Mark Mattson, president of Lake Ontario Waterkeeper. “Water plays a central role in most Canadians’ work, recreation and geography, and accordingly, it becomes a central focus of our music, art, poetry and literature.” Just look at the Group of Seven: Lawren Harris’s icebergs and Franklin Carmichael’s gradient skies reflected on still lakes. Canada’s water, in all forms, was a muse to each of them.

Today, the medium is different but not the message. Witness SwimDrinkFishMusic.com, an online subscription-based music club that gives members access to songs donated by Canada’s top artists, such as The Tragically Hip’s Gord Downie or the Great Lake Swimmers. Membership in the club — whose name is a dig at the “Don’t Swim, Don’t Drink, Don’t Fish” signs along Toronto’s shoreline — has more than doubled over the past year. “It’s been an amazing way for environmental advocates to link with artists in a way that benefits both,” says Mattson. “The site is building a new generation of people who care for a swimmable, drinkable and fishable future for all Canadians.”

As water animates the arts scene, its advocacy is also moving to the fore. “Water does have a particular significance to Canadians,” says Julian Kingston, project director of the Royal Ontario Museum’s “Water: The Exhibition,” which runs until Sept. 5. The museum has taken more of an advocacy stance around this exhibit, says Kingston, pointing out, for example, how closely our water footprint is tied to energy consumption or food items. “We are going out of our way to say, ‘Here are some things you probably need to think about.’”