Lake Huron, ON

Hi, my name is Nick Heisler.

My Waterbody is Ipperwash Beach on Lake Huron.

For the first 18 years of my life or so, I grew up in Southern Ontario on a farm. I was able to take advantage of the lakes, almost daily if I wanted. I was a 5-6 minute drive to the Lake. For the first 18 years I had the advantage of being very close to Lake Huron and could go to the beach when I was hot working on the farm.

Then I moved to Ottawa and I didn’t realize until I moved the benefits of the micro climate of being surrounded by the Great Lakes. That coolness you get, I could breathe so much better and now when I come home and I visit I can breathe so much better.

Now I have a daughter and she’s nine and I’m very worried about the climate effects on the lakes, especially that micro climate. What shocks me is my daughter is nine and I have photos of her when she was three and we’re swimming on Ipperwash Beach and it’s May Two-Four weekend and I have photos of her and she is seven and and we’re swimming on Ipperwash Beach and it’s Thanksgiving.

As a child, in the 18 years that I was there, unless you were very hardy and very brave you would not have ventured into the water on either of those dates. For me its a real physical, concrete sign that the waters are getting warmer and the air is getting warmer and we need to understand the long term effects because I’m concerned that they’re not going to be good.