Lake Erie, ON - Tzeporah Berman | Great Lakes Guide
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Lake Erie, ON

Tzeporah Berman

My Watermark is Lake Erie.

My earliest memory is of being 7 years old and being at my cottage in Ontario, and being told that I wasn't allowed to swim in the lake because it was too polluted. It was Lake Erie. That changed my relationship of water; I was looking at this immense, expansive water and knowing I couldn't even be in it.

Fast forward 20 years later, I remember being 23 years old on the West Coast of British Columbia. I was hiking with a First Nations friend and he leaned down and drank from the river. I said "no, don't!" and he said "why not?".

I realized I was in a place where it was okay to just drink the water. And that changed my work in the world and what I do, and my relationship with water. I realized that we should have this relationship with water, that we should be able to drink from the rivers, to fish in the streams, that water is life.

Location

Lake Erie, ON

Watersheds

Lake Erie

Collected by

Brett on the Water

Contributed by

Tzeporah Berman

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