Lake Ontario, ON

My name is Julian Ganton and I grew up on Toronto Island, 31 years, I’ve been using the water ever since I can remember. Since I was a kid I probably learned to paddle and swim in conjunction with learning to walk. And this is a perfect actual spot to do our interview because I was at this camp as a young child, the Toronto Island Canoe camp as well as on this side the Queen City Yacht Club, sailing program so I had done both and now I run a business which is in between both of those which is Toronto Island SUP, which is stand up paddle boarding. So throughout my life I’ve just done everything, every water sport there is, open water swimming you name it.

It’s important to me because it's important to my community. It started with people always asking me what is the water quality because I operate here, because I’ve been here my whole life. I felt it was sort of my responsibility to come up with some answers so I got in touch with Swim Drink Fish to start a little community program. I’m in it every day and other people are too, people I care about, so I want to be able to know what’s there and you can’t protect that unless you have the data unless you have some information about what’s in it.

The water means so much to me, not only for recreation but also, you have to realize we as humans are about 70% water and most of that water for our entire city and many of the other cities around the Great Lakes comes from Lake Ontario. So if you think about it we are the water, we are that which is in front of us. We are a part of it and we have always in large part thought of it as separate as a resource, and I think we need to start seeing it as something that is connected and this a part of us in order to protect it. So taking part in activities on it, in it and immersing ourselves regularly to actually see it as part of us. I think that’s something I’ve done my whole life and that’s something, sort of a message that I’ve always projected forward in my experience.