Sheldon Creek, ON

My Watermark is Sheldon Creek, Ontario.

It's actually a very significant waterway in that it has a functional ecosystem that supports Rainbow Trout and Salmon. It's really surprising in an urban area this creek has so much wildlife in it.

Basically it was this newspaper stand that got me. Every morning I'm eating my breakfast and I could see this newspaper stand in the creek. It just bothered me. I had to find out where all this trash was coming from. So I took my camera and walked up the creek and discovered that Sheldon Creek was basically full of trash.

I founded a stewardship organization called Friends of Sheldon Creek. Then I started organizing cleanup events along Sheldon Creek. These cleanup events are actually a lot of fun. It's not the average person who takes their Saturday morning off and pulls old television monitors, antique care parts, and tires out of the ravine; it's a very special group of people. It's an amazing sense of satisfaction that you've actually contributed in a significant, meaningful way to making the planet a better place.

If we don't take care of our sources of drinking water, we're not just polluting the environment, we're also polluting ourselves, we're polluting our bodies, and we're creating problems for future generations. These creeks should be cleaning and purifying our water, not a source of pollution.