Georgian Bay, ON

My Watermark is Georgian Bay.

As a child it was Georgian Bay because we went camping every year for three to four weeks in the summer, and we would swim and do everything in the water. And when I was very young, we would bathe in the water, washing our hair and shampooing in the lake every time.

I remember my mother started saying that we shouldn't shampoo in the lake and we started collecting rainwater. We were really only clean if it rained and we could collect the water. We'd put out all our buckets and big pots and we would collect all the water we could, then we would get our shampoo. I think she had heard about all the shampoo when we went swimming, and that we would see bubbles in the water, and she didn't like it. We then started equating it with pollution and we realized that it wasn't a cool thing to do.

We also would see that they stopped letting boats come up to the beach area because we’d begin seeing the gasoline streaks. It soon became a canoe only beach; in time we started understanding more and became conscious of things in the water. But, you know, they just moved the boats – it really didn't change things.

I wish I had more time to go. Even if it’s just to Lake Ontario because I live right near it. I would love to be out canoeing but, you know, life gets in the way.