Georgian Bay, ON

I grew up in Meaford, which is on Georgian Bay in Ontario. In the winter I lived a block away from our harbour. I loved to go down and look at the boats and to cross the bridge when I was walking to high school. In the summer we moved 2 miles out of town to our cottage on the bay. It was and still is, amazing to stand and look at the water and the sky, to see the ever changing colours, especially in the evening, from turquoise, to pale blue, to pink, to mauve, to see it calm and flat and to see it with raging waves and whitecaps. I still love wandering along the beach looking for different kinds of rocks, black or pink or white, flat ones for skipping, and the rare one with fossils. I love looking for other treasures like feathers and pieces of driftwood.

Meaford is situated in a river valley. When I am heading home from the land-locked town I live in now I look forward to my first glimpse of the bay from the top of the hill, with arms of land outspread cradling it. I have travelled a fair bit, and I still think that view is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

I am worried about the bay though. We were lucky enough to have a cottage on a little lake near Magnetewan, and when we bought the property we knew we were restricted as to where we built the cottage, how many trees we could cut down, and what the lake could be used for. As people have built on the bay, there have been no restrictions. Lawn, and of course pesticides right down to the water line, millions of trees cut down, invasive species being introduced, paved driveways allowing oil and chemicals to go directly into the lake, speedboats and jet-skis spewing pollution, etc.

When I was a kid there were so many birds - a flock of 100 gulls was not unusual, lots of ducks, geese, even swans. This summer I have hardly seen any.