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Gravenhurst to adopt No Mow May campaign this spring

Photo by kavcicm/Shutterstock

If you’re busy with spring cleaning and opening the cottage, why not lighten your workload this spring by not mowing the lawn? The town of Gravenhurst is adopting No Mow May this year in an effort to help local biodiversity and pollinators at this crucial time of year. 

No Mow May encourages property owners to stop mowing their lawns during the month of May, which is an important time for bees and other pollinators who depend on early-blooming plants and flowers for food after hibernation. Mowing your lawn only once a month has been shown to increase local bee populations and leads to 10 times more pollination in your area, which can lead to a better summer garden with more flowers and bountiful crops and support biodiversity throughout the year. 

“I think this is very much an educational exercise,” says Gravenhurst mayor Heidi Lorenz about why the town chose to adopt the campaign. “While lawns have a place for sports use, they really aren’t environmentally friendly. Grass generally requires chemicals and lots of water to thrive, and ideally, native plants are a more suitable solution.” Native plants thrive on lawns when not mowed or cut down. They are particularly important for proper pollination because native flowers, like dandelions and crocuses, not only provide nectar and pollen for pollinating insects but shelter and a suitable habitat too.

Insect populations are declining globally due to climate change, pesticide use, and habitat destruction. “Muskoka relies on clean lakes, beautiful scenery, and fresh air—it’s what draws people here,” says Mayor Lorenz. “Every little thing counts for climate mitigation, so if we can move the needle just a little bit in Mother Nature’s favour, I think we should give it a try.” 

Introduced by the Nature Conservancy of Canada in 2021, No Mow May is based on a U.K. campaign that is gaining international popularity. According to Lorenz, Gravenhurst is the first town in Muskoka to test-run the project, but other Ontario towns, such as Kingston and Sudbury, are participating as well. You don’t need to be a resident of these areas to participate; everyone is encouraged to partake in No Mow May to help their local ecosystems. 

During the campaign, Gravenhurst will suspend certain by-laws regarding maximum grass height and maintenance. Town Council will meet at the end of the month to discuss whether or not Gravenhurst should adopt this policy annually. The campaign is purely voluntary, and people may continue to mow their lawns if they wish. All sports fields, parks, playgrounds, and municipal properties will continue to be mowed. 

Can’t participate in No Mow May this spring? No worries. Not raking your leaves in the fall supports biodiversity by helping bees and butterflies hibernate over the winter, cultivating healthy roots in trees, and providing a source of food and shelter for burrowing insects. Raking and mowing your lawn are “chores I personally would be glad to leave in the past,” says Mayor Lorenz. 

You can learn about more conservation efforts in Muskoka here.

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Man and dog rescued after getting stuck in abandoned septic tank in Alberta

Photo Courtesy of Emily Rawson

On April 16, Emily Rawson and her boyfriend, Greg Saulnier, had Sunday dinner at her parent’s house in Okotoks, Alta., 45 kilometres south of Calgary. After the meal, Rawson and Saulnier took their three dogs, Buck, Brinley, and Ferb, out for a walk. They headed down the ridge behind Rawson’s family home, which leads to a river valley and beyond it an open field of grass that used to be a campground—a section of land Rawson’s been exploring since she was a kid. Despite being privately owned, it’s become a popular dog-walking area.

The three dogs took off to explore. Buck waded into the swampy water of a nearby pond. Rawson called Buck back but was distracted by Brinley. When she looked up, Buck was gone.

“That was just really strange,” she says, “because he’s actually a therapy dog, so he doesn’t really leave my area. And it was weird that I couldn’t hear any walking or any sign of him.”

Septic Tank
Photo Courtesy of Emily Rawson

Rawson shouted Buck’s name. When she didn’t hear anything, she texted her mom at the house, asking her parents to come and help look. She kept shouting Buck’s name until finally she heard a single bark. “It kind of sounded like there was an echo,” Rawson says. She checked the storm pipes near the pond but didn’t see anything, so she walked further into the campground. That’s when she heard what sounded like a panicked scream.

She’d never heard Buck make that noise. “My heart just instantly dropped when I heard that because I knew something was wrong,” Rawson says. Adrenaline kicked and Rawson and Saulnier hunted for the source of the barking. Rawson walked deeper into the field and almost tumbled into an opening in the grass the size of a manhole cover. Peering down, Rawson could see Buck about a metre and a half below, treading water.

It turns out the hole was an abandoned septic tank filled with cold water, a remnant of the campground. Rawson and Saulnier both reached into grab Buck but it was too deep. Unsure what to do, Rawson started having a panic attack, shouting at Buck to keep swimming.

Meanwhile, Rawson’s parents were walking down the ridge, headed over to help. At this point, Buck had been in the water for close to 10 minutes, and Saulnier noticed the dog’s head bobbing and slipping under.

“I keep ropes and all that kind of stuff in my vehicle,” Saulnier says. “But my vehicle was back at the house up the hill. And when I looked back at Buck, his head was up and down in the water. I knew we were running out of time.”

Saulnier stripped off his sweater, socks, and shoes, and slipped into the hole, plunging into the ice-cold water. “You could actually feel how cold the water was from the surface. You could see Buck’s breath it was so cold in there,” he says. “Once I dropped into the water, I submerged past my head and I still couldn’t touch bottom. I just went into cold shock.”

Septic Tank
Photo Courtesy of Emily Rawson

Saulnier collected himself, gripping a metal pole that ran vertically down the tank with one hand and grabbing Buck with the other. He pushed the 60-pound dog onto his chest and then hoisted him one-handed up towards the opening, kicking with his feet. It took two attempts, but Saulnier thrust Buck up towards Rawson where she’d been joined by her parents. Rawson’s dad managed to grab Buck by his ears and hoist him out of the hole.

“Buck was pretty limp,” Rawson says. “He didn’t really spark up for a while. I didn’t even think he was alive. I couldn’t look at him. And then I was worried about Greg in the hole.”

While Saulnier may have saved Buck, he now found himself stuck in the hole with the freezing water turning his body numb. Rawson and her dad grabbed Saulnier’s hands but were unable to lift him from the hole. And as the minutes ticked by, it was clear the cool temperature was making Saulnier weaker. The family had called emergency services but there was no indication of when they’d show up.

Looking for a way to get Saulnier out, Rawson dashed back to the house for a rope. “I ran up that hill,” she says. “It took about two minutes, which is normally about a 10-minute walk. I think adrenaline kicked in because I remember I couldn’t see. I was so dizzy, and I felt so sick.”

Rawson returned with a rope and her dad lowered it to Saulnier who tied it around his torso like a harness. Rawson’s dad held the rope tight, allowing Saulnier to let go of the metal pole and relax his arms. He continued to speak with Saulnier, keeping him conscious.

Septic Tanks
Photo Courtesy of Emily Rawson

“It was pitch black and freezing cold, and looking up at that hole, it was so close but so far, and you don’t have the strength to get yourself out. It was a scary thought being helpless like that,” Saulnier says. “I started to go in and out just from being so cold, and then off in the distance, I heard someone walking.”

The Okotoks Fire Department had arrived. The firefighters lowered a sling to Saulnier and hoisted him out of the hole. Saulnier’s skin was purple. He’d been in the water for 25 minutes. After being checked for injuries and signs of hypothermia, Saulnier was given the okay. “The fire department said if Greg was in there another two minutes, it would have been a completely different story,” Rawson says.

Septic Tank
Photo Courtesy of Emily Rawson

After the incident, the fire department told the town council about the open septic tank. Okotoks sent a team to investigate. The hole was estimated to be about three and a half metres deep. Since the abandoned campground is on private property, the town alerted the owner and asked them to seal the hole.

Septic Tank
Photo Courtesy of Greg Saulnier

A spokesperson for the town said that the property owner was shocked to find out what happened and is taking steps to seal the hole.

“The property owner was quite diligent in responding to that circumstance,” the spokesperson said.

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Southwestern Ontario park installs wind phone to help those who are grieving

Photo Courtesy of Ross Atkinson

On the shore of Lake Huron, about an hour’s drive northwest of London, Ont., sits the Ausable River Cut Conservation Area. A 32-acre park dissected by the Old Ausable Channel with sandy shores and the broad-leafed trees of a Carolinian forest. It’s a popular spot for hiking, canoeing, and fishing. But as of this spring, the conservation area features a new draw: a wind phone.

A wind phone is an unconnected telephone booth, offering a private space for a one-way conversation, a concept that originated in Ōtsuchi, Japan.

Venture 300 metres from the conservation area’s parking lot and tucked off the main trail, hidden amongst the trees, is a phone booth—not bright red or glassed-in like you might be used to. This phone booth is homemade and open to the elements, built from wood and tin, with a small bench to sit on. The most notable feature is a black, push-button phone bolted to the wood. When you put it to your ear, there’s no dial tone, just silence. The phone isn’t connected to anything. A small plaque next to the phone is inscribed with a poem explaining what the setup is all about: to give those grieving a lost loved one the opportunity to say goodbye.

Ausable River Cut Conservation Area
Photo Courtesy of Ross Atkinson

The Lambton Shores Nature Trails, a volunteer group that helps maintain sections of the conservation area, installed the wind phone after reading about one along a trail in Newfoundland. Ross Atkinson, the group’s chair of operations, felt the concept could benefit the community, providing an outlet for those grieving while motivating people to get out into nature.

“A lot of people don’t want to discuss death or passing with other people, whether it’s family or friends or children. They just want to ignore it,” he says. “Even though this is an unconnected phone, it allows people to go in there and chat and get something off their chest.”

Atkinson, along with volunteers Lee Main and Ed Hunter, built the phone booth from recycled materials. They chose the location based on the area’s level ground, making it wheelchair accessible. Atkinson purchased the phone from Amazon. “I was thinking that if it ever got vandalized and we had to replace it, well, I don’t want to have to replace an antique. It’s easier for me to just replace it with a replica phone,” he says. “But I don’t think that’s going to really happen.”

Ausable River Cut Conservation Area
Photo Courtesy of Ross Atkinson (Right: Ross Atkinson, Left: Lambton Shores Nature Trails board member Ed Hunter)

The group borrowed the poem on the plaque from the Newfoundland wind phone. It reads:

“Though I’ve lost you, I can hear your voice in the silent echoes of your absence. You speak to me through rustling leaves, whistling wind, and bowing branches. Though I’ve lost you, I feel you here in this shrine of trees in nature’s sanctuary. The Wind Phone is for all who grieve. You are welcome to find solace here. Please use it to connect with those you have lost. To feel the comfort of their memory. You may hear their voices in the wind. May you be at peace with your losses.”

The idea for the wind phone came from Japanese architect Itaru Sasaki in 2011. He built a white phone booth with a rotary phone in Bell Gardia Kujira-Yama Garden outside Otsuchi as a way to grieve his cousin’s death from cancer. However, on March 11, 2011, the area was rocked by an earthquake and tsunami, claiming the lives of nearly 20,000 people. After the catastrophe, other mourners started to use the wind phone.

The idea has since spanned continents, with over 100 wind phones recorded worldwide in places such as Canada, the U.S., the Netherlands, and the U.K. In the academic journal Refract, author Laura Boyce explores the growing use of wind phones, stating that it demonstrates “a need for dedicated places to maintain sustained relationships with the dead.”

The Lambton Shores Nature Trails volunteer group posted about the Ausable River Cut Conservation Area wind phone on its social media channels and within two weeks the posts had received 10,000 views.

Ausable River Cut Conservation Area
Photo Courtesy of Ken and Anne Higgs

“I had an email from a lady who just reading the poem alone, she was crying. She admitted to crying while she was making up the email to send me thanking us for putting the wind phone in place,” Atkinson says.

The volunteer group received permission from the conservation area’s stewardship and lands manager to install the phone. Considering how much success it’s had, Atkinson says they’re thinking about installing more.

“So what if within three or four or five kilometres, there’s two of them,” he says. “It just gives people more choice of where to go.”

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Memorial fund set up for paddler who drowned in Beaver Creek, north of Marmora, Ont.

Photo Courtesy of Whitewater Ontario/Facebook

On April 15, Jeff Pappin of Ottawa, Ont. drowned while kayaking along Beaver Creek, north of Marmora. The river is a popular spot for whitewater kayaking in the spring when the water’s high and full of paddlers tackling technical segments, such as Fiddlar’s Rapid and Double Drop.

Pappin was a proficient paddler, first getting into the sport at the age of 16. He called the Ottawa River home. During university, he spent summers leading paddling tours. And later, he shared his passion for paddling with his family, introducing his daughter, Merrill, to the sport when she was 19. The two took summer trips together paddling along the Madawaska, Petawawa, Le Petite-Nation, the Rouge, and Ottawa Rivers.

“He never needed to prove himself on the river and never took risks he couldn’t manage because he knew he had too much to live for,” his family wrote in a statement.

One of Pappin’s most revered traits was his ability to bring others together to enjoy the outdoors. Besides paddling, Pappin was also a board member of Kanata Nordic, a cross-country ski club based in Ottawa. As part of his role, Pappin tackled mundane tasks, such as grooming trails, installing culverts, and arranging porta-potties. On its Facebook page, Kanata Nordic wrote that Pappin took on these jobs without the expectation of praise but just to make things a little better and a little easier for those around him.

“Jeff was an enthusiastic guy who volunteered so much of his time and energy to his passions, and Kanata Nordic was just lucky enough to be counted as one of his projects,” the club said.

To honour Pappin’s legacy, his family has created the Jeff Pappin Memorial Fund through Whitewater Ontario, a volunteer-run organization that promotes the development of whitewater resources and the paddling community within Ontario.

Under the guidance of the Pappin family, the funds will be used to get young paddlers out on the river and to train them in boat safety.

Those wishing to donate to the memorial fund can send an e-transfer to info@whitewaterontario.ca or mail a cheque to:

Whitewater Ontario

411 Carnegie Beach Rd.

Port Perry, ON

L9L 1B6

When sending the donation, make sure to note that it is intended for the Jeff Pappin Memorial Fund.

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6 ways cottagers can help protect common loons

Photo by Harry Collins Photography/Shutterstock

1. Volunteer to help

Volunteer for the Canadian Lakes Loon Survey at birdscanada.org/loons. Birds Canada will mail you an information package with observation sheets to fill out. Citizen scientists are asked to record loon observations on their lakes at least one day per month for June, July, and August.

2. Naturalize your cottage property

Naturalize your shoreline to provide prime nesting habitat and shelter for small chicks, says Doug Tozer at Birds Canada. Let native brush and tall grasses grow naturally in a buffer along the length of your property’s shoreline. Aim for eight metres (25 feet) depth back from the water’s edge, though smaller buffers help too.

3. Don’t litter

Keep a litter-free yard and secure garbage bins so you don’t attract raccoons and other land-based predators.

4. Don’t rock the boat

When driving boats, keep away from the shoreline to protect loon nests. If you see a loon, slow down and give them space—more than you think. Experts suggest a berth of around 100 m, or several hundred feet. The sound of a boat motor can cause a parent to panic and swim away from its young chicks, the perfect opportunity for a herring gull or raven to swoop in for a meal. Chicks are less adept at diving to escape danger, especially in wakes.

5. Keep your distance

When you’re paddling around the lake, look for signs that a loon is stressed by your presence. The tremolo call may sound like laughter, but it’s actually a distress call. “If you hear that, you should back off,” Tozer says. If a loon swims away from you, you’re getting too close. And if a nesting loon dips its head low and flat in the “hangover” position, it’s also time to back away.

6. Use lead-free fishing tackle

If you fish, use non-toxic, non-lead tackle. Ingesting lead is lethal for loons.

Julia Nunes wrote and directed the one-hour feature documentary, Loons: A Cry From the Mist.

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Loons are being threatened—this is why and how you can help

Photo by Jeremy Hynes

As a documentary filmmaker, I’m often telling stories from far-flung places, but last summer I uncovered one in my own backyard—the lake. Our log cabin looks out on the far end of Smoke Lake in Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park. It has a massive deck, perfect for watching the seasons change from spring to summer to fall and for soaking in the quiet. Often, our nearest neighbours are the resident loon pair, who seem to appreciate the isolation as much as we do. At night, they call to each other, a haunting sound that somehow embodies the Canadian outdoor experience. By day, in early summer, they parade their chicks on their backs as if showing them off for us. And by late August, those chicks have grown enough to practise liftoff, flapping their wings in preparation for fall migration.

Over the past few summers, I started noticing things were amiss. The calls were less frequent, the chicks harder to spot from my trusty kayak. Had the loons moved elsewhere? Or were they in trouble? The search for answers ended up becoming an hour-long documentary.

One of the first things I learned is that these majestic but mysterious birds are tricky to study; there are big holes in our understanding of where they go and what they do. “They’re a cryptic species,” says Ken Wright, a wildlife biologist and loon researcher in B.C. “They’re beautiful, amazing birds, and yet there is not much known about them.”

Part of the challenge is their elusive nature—as anyone who’s tried to predict where a diving loon might surface can attest. Also their population is widely dispersed, often in remote areas. “Loons don’t nest where there are lots of people, they fly along the ocean where we’re not really looking, and they aren’t hunted so there are no government-led monitoring programs in place,” says Mark Mallory, an Acadian University professor and a Canada Research Chair. It would take countless hours for researchers to mount a population census. Thankfully, scientists have the help of cottagers, who have easy viewing access from their docks, shorelines, canoes, and kayaks.

How can cottagers help scientists?

For more than four decades, Birds Canada has recruited cottagers to collect data for its annual Canadian Lakes Loon Survey. “One of the big advantages is that you can engage so many volunteers, and you have all these folks all over the place,” says Doug Tozer, the director of waterbirds and wetlands at Birds Canada. “You can monitor so many more lakes than you ever could with paid staff.” Over the years, cottagers and other citizen scientists have kept tabs on more than 4,000 lakes. “People volunteer to make observations of loons and, particularly, how many chicks they produce, and they report it back to us,” says Tozer. “We use that to monitor how healthy loon populations are.”

In 2021, their analysis of all of that collected data started to raise alarm bells.

Across almost all of Canada, common loons—the loon species that breeds the farthest south into cottage country—are struggling to reproduce. Adult populations are stable at about 240,000 breeding pairs, but if they cannot raise enough young to replace themselves, the future of the species is at stake. As Wright puts it: “Just because you see loons on your lake doesn’t mean all is well.”

“We’re right on the doorstep of them producing so few chicks that their populations are going to start to decline,” says Tozer, who co-authored the analysis of decades of data with fellow biologist Kristin Bianchini. “We really identify with loons as being part of Canada, and we’re going to almost lose a part of us, I think, if that happens.”

Common loon productivity (measured by how many chicks a loon pair can raise to six weeks of age) has dropped by an average 1.4 per cent per year nationwide over the past three decades and is now hovering just above the rate at which overall population numbers will start to fall. Declines are steepest in Atlantic Canada, but the downward trend persists in every province except—for reasons unknown—Quebec.

“We are really stymied as to what the mechanisms are behind those declines, and that has me worried,” Tozer says. “There are only so many loon researchers in North America. It’s a small group, so we feel a lot of pressure to figure out what’s going on.”

What hardships are loons facing during breeding season?

To understand the hardships facing loon families, our cameras followed the progress of two pairs of loons over the course of a breeding season, one pair in Wisconsin where similar long-term population studies are underway, and one in Algonquin Park. As we rolled (from a safe distance with long lenses), I found myself both impressed and concerned.

Loon parents face so many challenges in raising their young. They are excellent swimmers but move awkwardly on land, so they nest at the water’s edge where they can slip into the lake at the first sign of danger. The location leaves their eggs vulnerable to raccoons, otters, and other shoreline predators. The adults must maintain a gruelling, constant vigilance throughout the four-week incubation period. Nests can be washed out by motor boat wakes or sudden heavy rainfalls that drown the eggs if left unattended. As shorelines are developed, the number of prime nest sites shrinks, and rival intruder loons will sometimes attack, even kill, resident loons to take over a territory.

Once the eggs hatch, the workload only increases. Chicks enter the water within hours and stay on the same lake until they learn to fly in the fall—if they survive that long. Life on the open water leaves them vulnerable to predation from above in the form of birds of prey, so they need around-the-clock parental protection. Unlike adult loons, which are strong enough and have sharp enough beaks to fight off an eagle swooping down for a quick meal, chicks need help to stay alive.

Chicks also require a steady supply of fish to eat, all of it coming from a single lake. The faster they grow, the more likely they are to avoid predation. In the first several weeks, parents must do all the hunting: diving, catching, surfacing, feeding the chicks and themselves, then starting over again. Loon families require lakes with lots of fish and clear enough water to find them; two parents with two chicks can consume up to a half-ton of fish in a single season.

“You watch a loon family out on a lake and it looks really easy right? But there’s a lot that can go wrong if you’re a chick,” Tozer says. “You can starve, you can have inclement weather, you can get separated from your parents by a motorboat and then something eats you.” Since loon parents hatch only one or two young per season, every chick loss is significant.

And yet, common loons have persevered for eons. They are one of the oldest living bird species on earth, dating back 70 million years. Why are they struggling now? The biologists I spoke to, both in Canada and parts of the northern United States where similar declines have been observed, agree that human-induced environmental changes are likely at the root. And that’s what worries them most.

“Common loons winter off our coasts. They summer in our backyards at cottages, so they are very vulnerable to human activity,” says Wright. “They are showing us what the health of our lakes is.”

What are the major inhibitors to common loon reproduction?

It will take years’ more study to know for sure, but researchers have three major concerns about the lake water that loons inhabit. Mercury—a pollutant released from the burning of fossil fuels—is found in many lakes across Canada, and is a neurotoxin that makes loon parents lethargic, less able to care for their young.

Second, acid rain that fell decades ago has killed off fish stocks that have yet to fully rebound in some areas. “Loons need lots of big, nutritious organisms, in the form of fish, to survive. But those are exactly the things that got knocked out of these lakes by acid rain,” says Mark Mallory, who has studied the effects of lake acidification on loons in the Sudbury, Ont. area. Recent research shows that, even after acidity has dropped in some lakes, the loons have not returned. “Nature is very resilient, and it may take a long time for things to decline,” says Mallory. “And correspondingly, it can take a long time for things to recover.”

The third main concern is climate change. To see a nesting loon panting in the heat, beak open and breathing heavily, is heartbreaking. But biologists who study loons believe that the effects are far more insidious: among other outcomes, warming waters cause an increase in methylmercury levels and cause bacteria to be more active. As Tozer says, “Climate change is going to be the big ugly thing in the background that’s causing a lot of this change.”

Loons are especially vulnerable to environmental change because they return to the same lake where they’ve laid eggs in the past, even if conditions are deteriorating. “This is hard-wired into their genetics,” Mallory explains. “They keep trying because they’ve defended the territory and they think everything else looks good about this site.”

The loon pair our cameras followed last summer in Algonquin were able to navigate the breeding season’s many challenges and raise two healthy chicks. Sitting in an edit suite watching the parents brave swarms of blackflies to stay on a nest or delicately manoeuvre their long beaks to carefully rotate an egg was awe-inspiring. To see them underwater, turning on a dime to catch a yellow perch, is to witness them at the peak of their powers. Both chicks grew at an astonishing rate—from tiny fluff balls to juveniles almost the size of their parents. It felt like a victory despite the larger question marks about the survival of the species.

In late fall, long after we close up our cabin each year, the young loons are left to fend for themselves. Their parents migrate first, leaving them alone on the frigid waters for several weeks. They feed and grow, building strength until just before the ice comes in. Then they too take flight, on their maiden journey south, as instinct guides them to do.

I only hope it continues for generations to come. For the loons’ sake and for ours.

Julia Nunes wrote and directed the one-hour feature documentary, Loons: A Cry From the Mist.

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How to go to the bathroom in the woods

Tom Hartrey/Shutterstock

What happens when nature calls on a camping trip? Well, you use the park-provided facilities—that is, of course, what they’re there for. When you’re backcountry camping or deep into the forest, you may be tempted to just go when and where nature calls. But just because you can pee anywhere doesn’t mean you should. Using a public restroom protects you, wildlife, and plants. However, when there are no other options, there are some dos and don’ts of how to go to the bathroom while you’re out enjoying the great outdoors.

When you’re going to the bathroom in the woods, it’s important to follow the leave no trace principle to care for the environment, local ecosystems, and future visitors. Disposing of human waste properly doesn’t just benefit the people that come after your trip, but it avoids potentially polluting water sources, killing plants, and spreading disease. 

It’s best to go about 60 metres (or more) from any campsite, hiking trails, or waterways. Why? The salt in urine attracts animals like bears and other unwanted cottage creatures, according to Stephan Herrero’s book Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance. So, unless you want Yogi Bear visiting you in the wee hours of the morning, make sure you go as far away as possible from your campsite.  

Choose your spot wisely

Once you’ve found your natural biffy, avoid peeing on the plants. While you may have heard the old wive’s tale about using human urine as a fertilizer, there’s another reason to avoid it: animals have a tendency to dig up plants that have urine on them, according to the National Park Service—and these plants and local ecosystems may have otherwise not been disturbed. According to the NPS, another option is to urinate on rocky surfaces to avoid animals kicking up the terrain.

After number one comes…

So what about going number two? If you don’t have a bag that you can use to dispose of human waste properly, the best practice is to bury your left behinds under dirt and stones, allowing it a chance to decompose, according to Leave No Trace. Also, consider using portable sanitary reusable toilet systems.

When it comes to burying your business, think like a feline and dig a cat hole, recommends Leave No Trace. This is one of the most common ways of properly disposing of human waste—it allows the waste to decompose, minimizing the risks of attracting animals. Dig a hole six to eight inches deep and four to six inches wide. Then cover it with dirt and other natural materials—preferably under a sunny spot, which helps it to break down quicker. If you must use this trick more than once, be sure to go to in different spots. Overuse can damage vegetation and local ecosystems. 

What to do with toilet paper

Let’s not forget about toilet paper. While human waste can decompose, most toilet paper cannot, according to Leave No Trace. The perfumes and other materials make it difficult to degrade, so it is non-negotiable that if you bring it with you, you need to dispose of it properly. Alternatively, grab a roll of natural toilet paper, which will break up eventually.

Watch out for the water

What if there’s a lake nearby? Can you urinate in our fresh waters? Although you may find this the easiest solution, you should never pee in the lake. Human pee contains nitrogen, which can increase algae growth and can be toxic to fish, according to the Rich Earth Institute. When algae dies, bacteria decomposes and deoxygenates, killing fish and other aquatic ecosystems. Water treatment plants prevent these toxins when dumped back into our waterways, but you bypass this process when peeing straight into the source, especially when the water is stagnant.

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Buy the Way: This couple used a line of credit to buy their dream cottage in P.E.I.

Photo by Marcia Ruby

The search
Marcia Ruby and Tom Howard always hoped they’d get back to the Maritimes. Tom’s from Saint John, N.B., and for more than 30 years, the Kitchener, Ont.-based couple would travel east with their two daughters to visit family. “But when the grandparents passed, we had no easy place to go,” says Marcia. “Our hearts were there, but our wallets weren’t.”

So when Tom’s sister sent them the listing for a cottage on P.E.I. in May of 2021, their first instinct was to shrug it off. “But when we looked at the place, we just saw ourselves there,” says Marcia.

What they got
It was a modest, two-bedroom, 621 sq. ft.-bungalow listed for $199,900, across the street from the ocean in Fernwood, just 20 minutes from Summerside on the Northumberland Strait—a spot known for the Seacow Head Lighthouse from the 1985 Anne of Green Gables movie.

They hadn’t been looking to buy anything, but they still had some bank credit available from when they’d downsized from their house in Kitchener to a condo nearby a dozen years ago. “A light went off. We could use the home equity line of credit we’d established when we bought our condo,” says Marcia. (A home equity line of credit, or HELOC, is a revolving line of credit that allows you to borrow against the equity you’ve already accrued in a property.) Their fixed interest rate was decent at 1.8 per cent, so it was beginning to look like the perfect time.

Within a few hours, they’d found a local realtor and put in an offer of just over $200,000. By the next morning, the place was theirs.

The silver lining
The cottage is just what they’d hoped it would be: their daughters—now 34 and 39—host friends in the spring, and the couple spends their summers there. Of course, there’s always a hiccup: the septic tank couldn’t be repaired. The family switched to a holding tank that filled up faster than they realized. To offset pressure on the tank, daughter Amelia immediately got to work building an outdoor shower, which they love even more than the indoor setup.

“It just made sense financially for us to buy this way,” says Marcia. “And we’re pretty happy to have the means for our family to stay rooted in the Maritimes.”

Marcia Ruby and Tom Howard standing on a beach in Prince Edward Island
Photo courtesy of Marcia Ruby

Line of credit know-how

Before you use a home equity line of credit to purchase a cottage, accredited financial counsellor Max Mitchell has tips.

Be careful about interest rates—especially if you’re on a variable mortgage

“In a previous interest-rate environment, a HELOC would be a lot more appealing or much lower risk than it is today, when interest rates are much higher,” says Mitchell, who’s based in Vancouver. Marcia and Tom have a low, fixed interest rate, and are currently paying down their principal as quickly as they can, before their mortgage and HELOC renews in a few years—likely at a higher rate.

Research the appreciation potential of property in the region 

“Anytime you’re using debt to purchase an investment, you should make a very educated guess to make sure your return is going to be higher than what you’re risking,” says Mitchell. “That doesn’t mean asking your realtor, who’s incentivized to make a sale.” In other words: do your own research.

Be prepared for future cash-flow crunches 

“If something comes around a year from now—such as having to pay for your kid’s wedding—you can’t sell the toilet from the cottage, you can’t sell the porch,” says Mitchell. “You have an incredibly illiquid piece of property.” Also, if renting out the cottage is part of your cost-covering plan, consider if you can still make the monthly payments if a flood, fire, or other event makes the place unrentable: “If everything goes sideways, how will you be impacted?”

Buy, sell, rent, dream

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Cottage Life

Biodiversity loss is threatening Canada’s wetlands; here’s why it matters

Photo by Elena Berd/Shutterstock

The swamps of the Minesing Wetlands, a 15,000-acre area about 15 kilometres west of Barrie, Ont., are not the most immediately welcoming of places. Convincing someone to spend a day exploring the thick, forested marshes—with clouds of mosquitoes in the air and bloodsucking leeches in the water—isn’t easy. I should know. I’ve been trying to convince friends to join me on a trip there for years. Again and again, my attempts are met with two questions: why would I visit, and why should I care?

Answering the first question is easy. Despite seeming unappealing, the Minesing Wetlands (sometimes called the “Everglades of the North”), are one of our country’s most significant wetland systems. As a conservation biologist helping to map out some of Canada’s most important places for nature, I’m excited to see some of the dozens of rare and endangered species that still call the Minesing Wetlands home. One species here has piqued my interest above all others—a jewel in this swampy rough. It’s called Hine’s emerald, a large dragonfly with a metallic green body and brilliant emerald eyes.

It’s an incredibly rare species; it requires a very specific type of wetland environment, and—unlike most dragonflies, which go from egg to adult in less than a year—the aquatic larvae of this species take three to five years to grow into adulthood, relying on crawfish burrows for shelter during winter and through any dry spells in summer. The Minesing Wetlands are the only place in Canada where this dragonfly is found, so as a nature lover, the slimmest chance to see this beautiful and unique piece of Canadian biodiversity is more than enough reason to visit.

Answering the second question—why should I care—takes longer to answer. I get asked similar things quite often: why care about this one rare species, no matter how beautiful it is? Why should I care about these wetlands or any other seemingly random place? Ultimately, it comes down to understanding why conservation and nature are important at all. Sure, nature is a nice-to-have, but is it really a must-have?

Why does biodiversity matter?

Most people are aware that across Canada and the world, we’re losing more and more wild biodiversity every year. From looking at around 25,000 Canadian species that scientists have some basic understanding of (a fraction of the estimated 80,000 species in Canada), we know that about one in five species in Canada are imperilled to some degree.

These bits of Canadian biodiversity are significant internationally too. More than 300 species in Canada are found nowhere else in the world. From the adorable Vancouver Island marmot to Algonquin Provincial Park’s Eastern wolf, the planetary survival of these species depends entirely on our conservation decisions here in Canada. When it’s gone here, it’s gone everywhere.

But, sometimes when I talk to landowners and land-users—farmers, cottagers, hunters, and ATV-ers—who hear me say we need to protect species or habitat, they get on the defensive. They don’t want to be told how to use their land, or be limited in what they do on it because of some obscure plant or insect. They want to know what purpose these species serve, and if their function really outweighs the inconvenience, annoyance, or danger that these animals pose to us. They want to know, if it’s gone, does it really matter?

The answer is, yes. Many of the natural processes that humans rely on depend on biodiverse ecosystems. Consider pollination, where a huge variety of wild bees, flies, and other insects—including mosquitoes—play a crucial role in ensuring the growth and yields of the fruits, veggies, and nuts that our diets rely on. Or consider decomposition, where species of ants, termites, mushrooms, worms, and more work together to break down and recycle dead plant and animal matter, clearing the way for new life. Gardeners will be familiar with these decomposers and detritivores as some of the main players in creating compost, but without them in the wild, we would quickly be buried under piles of dead plant and animal material.

Species including rattlesnakes and black widow spiders and plants such as American ginseng might hold the cure to helping treat different diseases and conditions. Even those “annoying” species are fundamental pieces of biodiversity. Throughout their life cycle, mosquitoes help to move nutrients between aquatic and terrestrial systems. They also form a key link between phytoplankton and micro-organisms—favoured prey of filter-feeding aquatic mosquito larvae—and larger animals, from bats to frogs, fish to birds. Mosquitoes are a central component of the food web in wetlands. Losing these pesky critters could compromise the function of the wetland, an ecosystem that helps us by filtering water, acting as a buffer to hold water and prevent destructive flooding during storms and winter thaws, and fighting climate change by removing carbon from the atmosphere. These are ecosystem services that would be massively expensive to replace.

Having a variety of species participating in these functions matters as well. For example, pollination is more effective when done not just by a single species (such as honeybees), but instead by a diverse set of wild pollinators. And more biodiverse ecosystems may also be more resilient to change.

While many species might seem similar on the surface, we still lack so much understanding about the basic biology of most species and the complex interactions that they participate in within ecosystems. It’s rarely clear what effect losing a species might have. To paraphrase biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich, early pioneers in the fields of conservation biology and environmental advocacy, losing species in an ecosystem is like blindly popping rivets off a plane while it’s flying. Some rivets might be redundant, and the plane can probably keep flying for a short while even with some structurally important rivets removed. But it’s silly to risk popping off any rivets when you don’t need to.

What can we do to help biodiversity?

We have a big (but not impossible) task ahead of us to make sure that we keep all of our rivets on the metaphorical plane (or threads in the tapestry of life, if you prefer a less utilitarian analogy). Preventing further loss and recovering biodiversity to what it was—think of it as restoring rivets that have been damaged on a plane—goes together with addressing the climate crisis. The good news is that nations are taking steps towards this.

Just this past December, 188 countries from across the world agreed to a new global framework for addressing biodiversity loss. While not perfect, the agreement contains some ambitious goals, including protecting 30 per cent of lands and waters by 2030, restoring and stopping the loss of areas important to biodiversity and of high ecological integrity, and addressing key drivers of biodiversity loss. Importantly, this agreement highlights the need for conservation to be led by (or at least happen in collaboration with) Indigenous peoples and local communities—something that is especially important here in Canada.

And it’s not just at the Minesing Wetland. Wherever you are—at the side of a lake, on the banks of a river, on the edge of a field, or deep in the woods—there are many things that you can do to help biodiversity around you. It can start as simple as creating a pollinator garden of native wildflowers (or encouraging the wildflowers that are already growing), setting aside parts of lawn or lands to stay “wild” (such as by leaving leaf litter or wetlands alone for the year), or building and properly maintaining nest boxes for species such as bats or bees.

Or you can participate in community science through apps such as iNaturalist or eBird. Local land trusts, conservation authorities, and nature groups can give you advice on the best actions to protect and steward lands you own and connect you to like-minded networks of people. Conservation doesn’t need to be hard, and doesn’t always need to be opposed to other ways of enjoying lands. By engaging with the conservation network and community around you, you can find new creative ways to take care of the land and appreciate nature.

Ultimately, stopping biodiversity loss requires action at both the local level and globally. As important as it is to protect and steward biodiversity near you, it’s also important to vote for leaders who will take conservation seriously and work to meet global commitments.

I’m looking forward to my trip to the Minesing Wetlands in search of the Hine’s emerald. I’ll keep asking people to risk the marshes and mosquitoes to join me, and along the way, start down the path of appreciating biodiversity in all its forms. Like the gears in a watch, every bit of biodiversity—whether it’s an emerald-eyed dragonfly, or a bloodsucking leech—plays some sort of role in the bigger picture and has intrinsic value of its very own. With hope and hard work—and an appreciation for the importance of all the pieces of our planet—I’m optimistic that creatures like Hine’s emerald and other rare species will be a little less rare by the time I get a chance to see them.

Peter Soroye is the Key Biodiversity Areas assessment and outreach coordinator with Wildlife Conservation Society Canada. As you read this, he’s likely on a hike that’s taking 200 per cent longer than necessary as he stops to photograph every bug, bird, and flower he sees along the way.

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Cottage Life

Starlink launches new Maritime plan for internet access at sea

Photo by kravik93/Shutterstock

This article first appeared on MobileSyrup and it has been shared with permission. To see the original article, click here.

Oceanbound Starlink customers can now access a new “Maritime” plan offering 50GB of data at sea.

The plan costs $329 a month in Canada and there is an additional one-time hardware cost of $3,170. According to Starlink’s website, it provides coverage to “boats of all sizes” and offers download speeds of 220Mbps.

The 50GB of data counts as “priority” data and includes access while at sea. Once customers use all the priority data, they can access unlimited data on inland coverage, such as on lakes and rivers, wherever the company’s services are available.

Starlink says customers will be able to purchase additional priority data with ocean access through their account at a later date.