Lake Ontario, ON

My Watermark is Lake Ontario.

I grew up in a previously small town a long time ago and have lots of early memories swimming in Lake Ontario. I remember the shore being rocky. There were hard rocks, but they were smooth; it’s hard surface had a smoothness from being in the water. And then after you get into a wading level, there was this coarse sand, and then it got a little salty as you went in further, and then rocks again.
These were some memories of swimming in Lake Ontario near Whitby.

Later on, another memory I have is when I was in the Boy Scouts and every spring usually men would come and fish off the pier. They would leave all garbage and smells behind and it was our job to go in and clean up after them. But I remember the fishy smell. There was commercial fishermen who do it for themselves. But I remember there was a lot of them and it was quite a trend. People would go fishing but there was a lot of garbage left over, so as a community group we would go out and clean the shore and clean the pier.

I remember edible smelt being fished out of Lake Ontario. I never did, but I knew people who did so. So those are my favourite memories of Lake Ontario. And I'd love to know: can we still eat fish from Lake Ontario? As an adult I went on a cold deep sea fishing out of Lake Ontario. A fellow I knew had a charter boat and we were catching great big salmon. My wife was expecting at the time, and he said, if you're expecting, you can’t eat fish out of the lake. So I would love it if we are able to get the fish out of Lake Ontario again.