Tag: Lake Ontario

Categories
Cottage Life

Are hovercraft the future of travel between Toronto and Niagara?

Photo Courtesy of CNW Group/Hoverlink Ontario Inc.

Tired of the QEW commute? Consider taking a hovercraft.

Starting next summer a new hovercraft service will run between Toronto and Niagara, transporting passengers across Lake Ontario in 30 minutes. That’s a quarter of the time it takes to drive.

Operated by Hoverlink Ontario Inc., the private company is in its final stages of launching after getting the green light from all three tiers of government. The company plans to use Toronto’s Ontario Place and St. Catharines’ Port Weller as its docking facilities. Both locations were chosen due to their proximity to tourist and sporting attractions, such as Niagara Falls and BMO Field, as well as connecting to other transportation infrastructure, such as the GO Train and Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport.

Hoverlink Ontario Inc.
Photo Courtesy of Hoverlink Ontario Inc.

In a recent announcement, the company said it will be operating two hovercrafts, the Griffon BHT-130 and BHT-150, with the intention of making 48 lake crossings per day, 365 days per year. Each hovercraft can hold 180 people in its cabin, meaning the company could transport up to three million people per year.

Beyond cutting commute times (around two hours by car or train) the service is expected to take thousands of cars off of the QEW, the company said, alleviating traffic and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The hovercrafts are powered by an extremely low-emission tier 3 engine that uses a diesel exhaust system to reduce 98 per cent of airborne toxins created by the engine. Yet it still manages to propel the hovercrafts at 80 to 100 km/h.

The hovercrafts use blowers to produce a large volume of air below the hull, raising it 1.8 metres above the surface. A rubberized skirt around the outside of the hovercraft helps to maintain the lift by applying slight pressure to the surface, approximately 1/16th of a human footstep. This allows the hovercraft to glide over land, water, and ice.

Unlike past ferry services that attempted the cross-lake commute, the hovercrafts can operate all year round and leave almost no wake, avoiding damage to shorelines. When in use, the hovercrafts produce 60 decibels of noise, similar to the level of a dishwasher, so the vehicle won’t disturb marine life below the surface or irritate any Lake Ontario neighbours, the company said.

Currently, there are no transportation services operating on Lake Ontario. The last ferry service, connecting Toronto to Rochester, N.Y., ended in 2006 due to financial issues.

This new service will be the first commercial use of hovercrafts in North America. The U.S. military, Royal Marines, and the U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards are the only other entities on the continent to use the vehicles.

Hoverlink Ontario Inc.
Photo Courtesy of CNW Group/Hoverlink Ontario Inc.

Hoverlink’s goal is to make the hovercrafts a viable option for commuters, so it’s aiming to keep ticket prices comparable to other Toronto-to-Niagara transit options. An official ticket price has yet to be released, but the company estimates it will cost $50 to $60 roundtrip. In comparison, a roundtrip bus or train ticket costs around $40.

Commuters will also be able to bring their bikes, kayaks, and strollers on board, but will have to leave their cars in the port’s parking lot.

“Hoverlink’s hovercraft service will unite families to sporting events, theatre, concerts, adult gaming, and one of the natural wonders of the world in 30 minutes,” said Argonauts general manager and Hoverlink board member Michael “Pinball” Clemons, in the announcement. “Hoverlink is changing the game.”

Feature Video


Categories
Cottage Life

Swimmer breaks record to raise funds for neurodegenerative disease research

Art by Taylor Kristan / photos by Sean Nuttall

Swimmer Sean Nuttall took on a 100-km swim across Lake Ontario to raise funds for neurodegenerative disease research, breaking the record for longest unassisted open-water swim by a Canadian in the process. 

Nuttall swam from his hometown of Toronto, Ont. to St. Catharines, Ont. and back—a trip which totalled 42 hours. Not only was this the longest unassisted open water swim by a Canadian, it was also the longest unassisted swim in Canadian waters, and the eighth longest on record in the world. 

Nuttall took on this challenge to commemorate his father who passed away five years ago after struggling with a neurodegenerative disease. His goal was to raise $50,000 for the Tanz Centre for Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases out of the University of Toronto. “Because this was the five year anniversary and because this was the biggest swim that I had tried, I wanted to do something in his memory,” he says.

The swim was unassisted, which meant Nuttall couldn’t wear a lifejacket or wetsuit, or be helped by any currents. He was in the water from Friday at noon to early Sunday morning, swimming through both Friday and Saturday night. He only returned to land to briefly reapply sunscreen at the halfway point.

Nuttall had a crew in a boat to guide and accompany him as he swam. To help him refuel, Nuttall’s team would attach food and water to the end of a line of rope, and toss it out to him. Nuttall would retrieve the supplies and consume them while treading water, and his crew would reel the line back in. 

This wasn’t Nuttall’s first kick at the can as far as long-distance open-water swimming goes. He’d finished three other long-distance routes regarded as the “Triple Crown” of open-water swimming—the English Channel, the Catalina Channel, and the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim. 

Other swims felt more physically demanding, says Nuttall, but this swim had its own set of challenges. On the second night of his swim, Nuttall started to feel incredibly cold. His team was monitoring his internal temperature, and despite how Nuttall was feeling, they found he was still maintaining his internal heat. Nuttall relied on their reassurance to continue through the frigidness, fear, and pain. “You’re basically naked other than a Speedo. And your reptilian brain is telling you this is not okay,” he says. “I relied really heavily on my crew to get me through that time.”

The swim also had some incredible high points, says Nuttall. He happened to be swimming during two astronomical events: August’s supermoon and the Perseid Meteor Shower. “Both nights I watched that huge orange orb come right up off the lake,” he says, adding that he could also see shooting stars from the meteor shower flying overhead. “It was magical.”

When his journey was finally over, Nuttall was greeted by a large group of loved ones who came out to show their support at Budapest Park in Toronto at around 8 a.m. on Sunday morning. While many of his previous long distance swims finished in cathartic tears, this one ended with a moment of jubilation. “It really quickly just became a moment of shared joy,” he says. 

Nuttall says he is extremely close to reaching his fundraising goal, a mark he hopes he can still hit. While more long distance swims may be on the horizon eventually, Nuttall is now taking some time to recover. “My immediate goal is to be able to lift my arms again,” he says. 

Donations can be made at https://www.seanswims.org/.

Categories
Cottage Life

Man drowns in Lake Ontario after falling off tour boat

Photo by Shutterstock/Vadim Rodnev

Around 2:41 p.m. on July 31, Toronto police responded to reports that a man had fallen off a boat into Lake Ontario and disappeared.

Toronto police sent their marine unit and officers from 14th division to search the area. The man, who fell into the water not far from Ontario Place and Lakeshore Boulevard, had been on a tour boat. It’s unclear how he fell overboard.

Just before 5 p.m., after being missing for two hours, the police’s marine unit found his body and pulled him from the water. Medics on site began performing lifesaving measures.

Paramedics took the man to the hospital where he later died.

According to the Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project, a nonprofit devoted to saving lives in the Great Lakes, 65 people have drowned in the Great Lakes so far this year, 14 of them in Lake Ontario. Last year there were 101 drownings in the Great Lakes.

On average, 152 people drown in Ontario each year, 80 per cent of whom are men, says the Lifesaving Society. The majority of these deaths happen during recreational activities, such as swimming and boating.

If you are going out on a boat, the Canadian Red Cross stresses the need to carry a Canadian-approved floatation device or lifejacket at all times, wait until you are off the water before consuming alcohol, and check the weather conditions before departing.

Categories
Cottage Life

Mississauga man drowns while tubing on Lake Ontario

Photo Courtesy of the Niagara Regional Police Service/Facebook

Around 7:40 p.m. on the evening of July 31, emergency services were contacted about a man who had gone missing in Lake Ontario off of Port Dalhousie near St. Catharines, Ont.

The man, a 37-year-old from Mississauga, had been tubing behind a motorboat when the tube flipped and the man was launched into the water. He did not resurface.

The St. Catharines Fire Service and the Canadian Coast Guard were brought in to search the area, along with officers from the Niagara Regional Police Service Marine/Under Water Search and Recovery Unit. Emergency personnel set off illumination flares throughout the night to help provide light.

At approximately 12:05 a.m., divers from the Under Water Search and Recovery Unit found the man not far from the area where he’d fallen off the tube. The coroner pronounced him dead at the scene.

A postmortem has been ordered, but the death is not being treated as suspicious.

At the moment, it’s unclear what safety precautions were in place when the man was tubing. Discover Boating, a boating resource operated by the National Marine Manufacturers Association advises that for any watersport towed behind a motorboat you should always:

  • Wear a personal flotation device
  • Use a spotter to indicate when riders have fallen
  • Know the capabilities of your rider
  • Know the limits of the equipment you’re using
  • And drive responsibly

Categories
Cottage Life

The battle against invasive sea lamprey in the Great Lakes rages on

Photo by T. Lawrence/Great Lakes Fishery Commission

For the past two years, COVID-19 impeded conservation operations in the Great Lakes. Now, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission is ramping up efforts to contain invasive sea lampreys that threaten the wellness of the ecosystem.

Sea lamprey management is a fickle but important part of Great Lakes conservation. Since the 1950s, Canada and the U. S. have been working in tandem to keep the invasive species in check and preserve the $7 billion Great Lakes fishing industry. However, in 2020 and 2021, pandemic restrictions prevented conservation workers from undertaking their usual ecosystem management efforts in the Great Lakes.

In the past, when control was eased, lamprey populations grew relatively quickly. However, Marc Gaden of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, which is in charge of sea lamprey management, says the organization is hopeful that renewed containment efforts will keep the population in check this time around. “We’re cautiously optimistic that we can weather this,” says Gaden.

What’s happening right now?

The pandemic limited the Commission’s capacity to work in the field and manage lamprey populations. The Fishery Commission’s lamprey management operations were only able to run at roughly 25 per cent capacity in 2020, and 75 per cent in 2021. “COVID set us back a bit, the past two seasons have been highly curtailed because the crews couldn’t get out there,” Gaden explains.

The lampreys that are spawning now, are survivors from the 2020 season. This means the Commission won’t know until the fall, once they’ve fully analyzed all the available data, how significantly the population has changed.

Still, Gaden is cautiously optimistic about the situation. The Commission had been aggressively controlling the sea lamprey population in the decade leading up to COVID-19, which happened to set them up well for the pandemic, says Gaden. “We went into COVID as well-positioned as you can be for a disruption of that size.”

Both the Canadian and American governments have provided the Great Lakes Fishery Commission with additional resources, allowing them to step up the battle against the sea lampreys, says Gaden. Now, the Commission is working at maximum capacity to apply the lampricide treatments. “We’re well-positioned from a resource position to really take this battle to the lamprey and to continue to suppress the populations to the target level we’ve set.”

What are sea lampreys?

Sea lampreys have been a thorn in the side of Great Lakes conservationists for a century. They’re ancient blood-sucking creatures with eel-like bodies and rows of concentric teeth. While the creatures are healthy contributors to their natural environment off the Atlantic coast, they’re devastating to the fish of the Great Lakes. 

“From a scientific point of view, even though sea lamprey are a huge pest in the Great Lakes, lampreys as a whole are evolutionarily pretty fascinating,” says Margaret Docker, a professor at the University of Manitoba who studies lamprey biology and freshwater fish conservation. Sea lampreys began to evolve half a billion years ago. The ancient sea creatures are often mistakenly referred to as eels thanks to their long and skinny bodies, but they’re actually considered jawless fish. “Almost all the lineages of jawless fish went extinct, and lampreys are one of the few survivors from that time, 400 million years ago,” says Docker.

Parasitic sea lampreys use their jawless but teeth-lined mouths to suction onto a host fish. Then, they use their tongue—which also has its own set of teeth—to chisel away at the flesh of their prey to suck up its blood. For those who are now scared to dip their toes into the Great Lakes, have no fear, sea lampreys only go after cold-blooded prey.

Docker says the larger fish of the Atlantic are able to handle the sea lamprey’s bite, which makes them little more than a nuisance (like a very large mosquito) in their native habitat. But for the smaller freshwater fish of the Great Lakes, the sea lamprey’s bite is often fatal.

Sea lamprey attached to a salmon
Photo by M. Gaden/Great Lakes Fishery Commission

Why are sea lamprey harmful to the Great Lakes?

The vampire-like fish was first seen in Lake Ontario in the mid-1800s, but it wasn’t until the 1930s that sea lampreys were documented in all five lakes. Gaden says sea lampreys entered the Great Lakes through man-made canals, and the Great Lakes happened to serve as the perfect habitat for the invasive creatures. It provided them with optimal spawning grounds, a plethora of tasty fish, and most importantly, a lack of natural predators. “That’s kind of the best recipe you could possibly have if you’re an invasive species,” says Gaden. “Those are the best conditions for an invasion.”

Gaden says prior to the late 1950s, sea lampreys inflicted enormous damage to the ecosystem of the Great Lakes. Individual sea lampreys are capable of killing 20 kilograms of fish and each female can lay 100,000 eggs. After their invasion, sea lampreys quickly decimated the fish populations of the Great Lakes. “They put some commercial fishers out of business,” says Gaden. “In some cases, they were eating more fish than humans were catching.”

In 1954, Canada and the U.S. joined forces to create the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, which they tasked with managing the Great Lakes ecosystem and containing sea lamprey populations. Gaden says the creation of this bi-national organization is a testament to how destructive the sea lamprey is. While the commission has had success and setbacks over the past half a century, today, lamprey numbers are only at a small fraction of what they were prior to control efforts, he says. 

The secret weapon in the fight against lampreys? Lampricide. Lampricide is a pesticide discovered by the Commission that kills lampreys while leaving other wildlife in the Great Lakes unharmed. “It’s a wild success story in terms of taking a species that essentially posed an existential threat to the Great Lakes, and bringing it under control using mechanisms that are safe for the environment and harmful to lampreys,” Gaden says.

It’s crucial that conservation efforts continue to ensure sea lampreys don’t expand beyond the Great Lakes, says Docker. 

Categories
Cottage Life

Cruise ships return to the Great Lakes after hiatus

Photo Courtesy of Vantage Deluxe World Travel/Facebook

Cruise ships are returning to the Great Lakes after a two-year hiatus during the pandemic. On April 29, the Port of Toronto Cruise Ship Terminal welcomed its first cruise ship in over two years, the Viking Octantis.

PortsToronto, which operates the terminal, said that 2022 will be one of its biggest years yet with 40 cruise ships scheduled to call at the port. According to a 2018 study, cruise activity in Ontario generates approximately $6 million in revenue annually for businesses catering to the vessels, passengers, and crew, such as restaurants, attractions, and shopping centres.

“The return of cruise ship passengers to the Great Lakes will bring renewal and revitalization to our local tourism and travel sectors, hard-hit over the past two years. We are thrilled to welcome them back,” said Geoffrey Wilson, CEO of PortsToronto, in a statement. “Between May and October, the Port of Toronto Cruise Ship Terminal will connect thousands of foodies, sightseers, and enthusiasts of all kinds to Toronto to discover what we know to be one of the greatest cities in the world.”

Not only will the return of cruise ships bring tourists to Toronto, but it’ll also allow Ontarians to visit other locations around the Great Lakes. In fact, this year, Vantage Tours is offering a 14-day cruise on its ship Ocean Explorer that takes passengers through four of the five Great Lakes, travelling from Toronto to Chicago.

The Ocean Explorer, which was launched in 2021, measures 104 metres long and features 77 cabins, holding a maximum of 162 passengers. Along its Toronto-to-Chicago route, the ship makes 21 stops, exploring some of North America’s largest lakeside cities, regional cuisine, and Indigenous history.

After leaving Toronto, the first stop on the ship’s itinerary is Port Colborne where passengers tour around Niagara Falls, and stop for lunch and wine tasting at a local winery. From there, the ship passes onto Lake Erie, stopping in Cleveland for a city tour that includes the Cleveland Museum of Art, the West Side Market, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

The next day, the ship docks in Detroit where passengers receive a guided tour of the Ford Rouge Factory, the automaker’s largest single industrial complex. From there, the boat goes to Lake Huron, heading north to Manitoulin Island in Georgian Bay, the largest freshwater island in the world. Here, passengers learn about Ojibwe culture, participating in a traditional smudging ceremony and powwow at the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation.

The cruise then continues on to Sault Ste. Marie before backtracking to Mackinac Island, a Revolutionary-era heritage site near the entrance to Lake Michigan that’s been car-free since 1901.

Finally, the ship reaches Chicago, taking passengers on an architectural tour of the city along the Chicago River.

Throughout the cruise, passengers can enjoy curated talks about the areas visited by a resident lecturer, as well as a long list of amenities, such as a spa, infinity pool, fitness centre, and an on-board restaurant.

As you’d expect, the cruise comes with a hefty price tag. Costs differ by cabin, but the starting price is $8,699, working out to $621 per day. The 2022 cruises are sold out, but if you’re looking for a way to explore the Great Lakes in 2023, cabins are still available.

Featured Video

Categories
Cottage Life

What we’ve learned from clean-up success on the Great Lakes

Photo by Sanbao/Shutterstock

The Great Lakes cover nearly 95,000 square miles (250,000 square kilometers) and hold over 20% of Earth’s surface fresh water. More than 30 million people in the U.S. and Canada rely on them for drinking water. The lakes support a multibillion-dollar maritime economy, and the lands around them provided many of the raw materials—timber, coal, iron —that fueled the Midwest’s emergence as an industrial heartland.

Despite their enormous importance, the lakes were degraded for well over a century as industry and development expanded around them. By the 1960s, rivers like the Cuyahoga, Buffalo, and Chicago were so polluted that they were catching fire. In 1965, Maclean’s magazine called Lake Erie, the smallest and shallowest Great Lake, “an odorous, slime-covered graveyard” that “may have already passed the point of no return.” Lake Ontario wasn’t far behind.

In 1972, the U.S. and Canada signed the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, a landmark pact to clean up the Great Lakes. Now, 50 years later, they have made progress, but there are new challenges and much unfinished business.

I study the environment and have written four books on U.S.-Canadian management of their shared border waters. In my view, the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement was a watershed moment for environmental protection and an international model for regulating transboundary pollution. But I believe the people of the U.S. and Canada failed the Great Lakes by becoming complacent too soon after the pact’s early success.

Map of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Basin
The Great Lakes-St Lawrence River Basin spans nearly half of North America, from northern Minnesota to New England.
International Joint Commission

Starting with phosphates

A major step in Canada-U.S. joint management of the Great Lakes came in 1909 when they signed the Boundary Waters Treaty. The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement built on this foundation by creating a framework to allow the two countries to cooperatively restore and protect these border waters.

However, as an executive agreement, rather than a formal government-to-government treaty, the pact has no legal mechanisms for enforcement. Instead, it relies on the U.S. and Canada to fulfill their commitments. The International Joint Commission, an agency created under the Boundary Waters Treaty, carries out the agreement and tracks progress toward its goals.

The agreement set common targets for controlling a variety of pollutants in Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, and the upper St. Lawrence River, which were the most polluted section of the Great Lakes system. One key aim was to reduce nutrient pollution, especially phosphates from detergents and sewage. These chemicals fueled huge blooms of algae that then died and decomposed, depleting oxygen in the water.

Like national water pollution laws enacted at the time, these efforts focused on point sources—pollutants released from discreet, readily identifiable points, such as discharge pipes or wells.

Diagram of the Great Lakes and connecting water bodies in profile.
This profile view of the Great Lakes shows that Lake Erie is much shallower than the other lakes. As a result, its waters warm faster and are more vulnerable to algal blooms.
NOAA, CC BY-ND

Early results were encouraging. Both governments invested in new sewage treatment facilities and convinced manufacturers to reduce phosphate loads in detergents and soaps. But as phosphorus levels in the lakes declined, scientists soon detected other problems.

Which Great Lake are you?

Toxic contaminants

In 1973, scientists reported a perplexing find in fish from Lake Ontario: mirex, a highly toxic organochloride pesticide used mainly to kill ants in the southeast U.S. An investigation revealed that the Hooker Chemical company was discharging mirex from its plant in Niagara Falls, New York. The contamination was so severe that New York State banned eating popular types of fish such as coho salmon and lake trout from Lake Ontario from 1976 to 1978, shutting down commercial and sport fishing in the lake.

In response to this and other findings, the U.S. and Canada updated the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement in 1978 to cover all five lakes and focus on chemicals and toxic substances. This version formally adopted an ecosystem approach to pollution control that considered interactions between water, air and land—perhaps the first international agreement to do so.

A tour of the Great Lakes and the nature in and around them.

In 1987, the two countries identified the most toxic hot spots around the lakes and adopted action plans to clean them up. However, as scholars of North American environmental regulations acknowledge, both nations too often allowed industries to police themselves.

Since the 1990s, studies have identified toxic pollutants including PCBs, DDT, and chlordane in and around the Great Lakes, as well as lead, copper, arsenic, and others. Some of these chemicals continued to show up because they were persistent and took a long time to break down. Others were banned but leached from contaminated sites and sediments. Still others came from a range of point and nonpoint sources, including many industrial sites concentrated on shorelines.

Many hazardous sites have been slowly cleaned up. However, toxic pollution in the Great Lakes remains a colossal problem that is largely unappreciated by the public, since these substances don’t always make the water look or smell foul. Numerous fish advisories are still in effect across the region because of chemical contamination. Industries constantly bring new chemicals to market, and regulations lag far behind.

Nonpoint sources

Another major challenge is nonpoint source pollution—discharges that come from many diffuse sources, such as runoff from farm fields.

Nitrogen levels in the lakes have risen significantly because of agriculture. Like phosphorus, nitrogen is a nutrient that causes large blooms of algae in fresh water; it is one of the main ingredients in fertilizer, and is also found in human and animal waste. Sewage overflows from cities and waste and manure runoff from industrial agriculture carry heavy loads of nitrogen into the lakes.

As a result, algal blooms have returned to Lake Erie. In 2014, toxins in one of those blooms forced officials in Toledo, Ohio, to shut off the public water supply for half a million people.

One way to address nonpoint source pollution is to set an overall limit for releases of the problem pollutant into local water bodies and then work to bring discharges down to that level. These measures, known as Total Maximum Daily Loads, have been applied or are in development for parts of the Great Lakes basin, including western Lake Erie.

But this strategy relies on states, along with voluntary steps by farmers, to curb pollution releases. Some Midwesterners would prefer a regional approach like the strategy for Chesapeake Bay, where states asked the U.S. government to write a sweeping federal TMDL for key pollutants for the bay’s entire watershed.

In 2019, Toledo voters adopted a Lake Erie Bill of Rights that would have permitted citizens to sue when Lake Erie was being polluted. Farmers challenged the measure in court, and it was declared unconstitutional.

Warming and flooding

Climate change is now complicating Great Lakes cleanup efforts. Warmer water can affect oxygen concentrations, nutrient cycling and food webs in the lakes, potentially intensifying problems and converting nuisances into major challenges.

How will the Great Lakes region be affected by climate change?

Flooding driven by climate change threatens to contaminate public water supplies around the lakes. Record-high water levels are eroding shorelines and wrecking infrastructure. And new problems are emerging, including microplastic pollution and “forever chemicals” such as PFAS and PFOA.

It will be challenging for the U.S. and Canada to make progress on this complex set of problems. Key steps include prioritizing and funding cleanup of toxic zones, finding ways to halt agricultural runoff and building new sewer and stormwater infrastructure. If the two countries can muster the will to aggressively tackle pollution problems, as they did with phosphates in the 1970s, the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement gives them a framework for action.The Conversation

Daniel Macfarlane is an associate professor of Environment and Sustainability, Western Michigan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

10 breathtaking beach towns on the Great Lakes

Categories
Cottage Life

Two fatal boating incidents claim 3 lives in Ontario

Photo by eskystudio/Shutterstock

Disclaimer: The following details may be disturbing to some readers.

Three people have died in two separate boating incidents in Southern Ontario over the past week. The first involved a power boat that Toronto Police say hit a breakwater wall at Tommy Thompson Park on Lake Ontario and subsequently capsized the night of May 31.

Tommy Thompson Park on a map
Photo courtesy of Google Maps

There were 10 people on board at the time of the crash, and eight were rescued from the water and from the boat by Toronto Police’s Marine Unit. It took police several hours before they found a 34-year-old man and a 24-year-old woman dead inside the boat. The young woman has been identified by her parents as Megan Wu, and a gofundme has been set up by her family to help with the legal investigation and civil case. According to her father’s post on gofundme, her body was found after the boat was lifted out of the water. She was trapped below deck and unable to escape the wreck. Toronto Police say the investigation into the cause of the crash is ongoing.

Megan Wu is pictured here in a photo posted to a gofundme account by her father, William Wu. Photo courtesy of William Wu/Gofundme

Over the weekend, on June 4, a 33-year-old Mississauga man died after the inflatable dinghy he was in with his seven-year-old daughter overturned in the Eramosa River at Rockwood Conservation Area, northeast of Guelph. OPP Const. Joshua Cunningham confirmed that the man was not wearing a lifejacket at the time, but the daughter was. Both were pulled from the water by bystanders, and the man was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The daughter was treated for minor injuries at the scene.

As the weather becomes nicer and more people hit the water, Cunningham wants to stress the importance of wearing a lifejacket.

“We see a lot of times where the parents put a lifejacket on their kids but not themselves and you need to also look out for yourself,” he said. “A lifejacket doesn’t do a whole lot of good unless it’s on properly.”

Wellington County Ontario Provincial Police are still trying to piece together what led to the man’s death and are asking the people who witnessed the event to contact them using the non-emergency line at 1-888-310-1122.

Rockwood Conservation Area
Photo by Google Maps

Categories
Cottage Life

The definitive ranking of the Great Lakes (according to Donovan Woods)

Photo by Bree Fisher / Photo collage by Taylor Kristan

Every April, Canadian singer-songwriter Donovan Woods releases a ranking of the Great Lakes on Twitter, as he has for the last several years.

Needless to say, when the rankings are released, people have thoughts. Cottagers and non-cottagers alike stumble over actually-no-you’re-wrongs faster than their fingers can fly across the keyboard. It could be because there isn’t much movement on the ranking from year to year (Lake Erie lovers, you’re in for a tough go), or that personal bias is so strong. I mean, who is this guy to rank the Great Lakes anyway?

 

Perhaps what adds to the mystique of this controversial list is that once it’s posted, Donovan is mum on the subject. You won’t find him defending his choices against replies desperately seeking explanation or fielding polite questions about his process. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his reasons or that he hasn’t thoroughly thought his decision through. And while he won’t reply on Twitter, he would talk to us. We sat down with Donovan to find out why he ranks the lakes as he does and, more importantly, what does he have against Lake Erie?

**

Alysha Vandertogt (AV): So, tell me—how did you start doing this? What inspired you to start ranking the Great Lakes?

Donovan Woods (DW): Well, my parents’ front yard is on Lake Huron, I’m from Sarnia, Ont. I’m partial to all the lakes, but I did grow up on Lake Huron. I try to keep my own personal bias out of my ranking, although I do think Lake Huron is the best by a long shot. But I’ve just always loved the lakes, I love ’em! My friends and I have always loved them.

We like to argue about the rankings of things. You know, what are the top five dinosaurs or the most classic farm animals. They really are quite interesting arguments. The number one farm animal is obviously cow. But then there are people who want duck in there, people who want sheep in there. There’s really not a lot of room for that, all of these things can become contentious.

AV: I was going to ask you about whether or not your upbringing and Sarnia might have influenced the rankings.

DW: Listen, I’ve swam in all of the Great Lakes. I don’t have any real training in the field, but I feel like I’m as good as anybody to judge them.

I’ll tell you, the first time I posted a ranking, I was so surprised by how contentious it was. People were very, very angry.

AV: I was looking back at tweets from years previous, and you even had a tweet in there about how you didn’t expect to have to block people as a result of ranking the Great Lakes.

DW: Yeah, exactly!

AV: How did you feel when people got so fired up? People were in your replies, they’re quote tweeting you. People are taking this really seriously.

DW: To me, that’s the funniest part. You can become an authority on something just by saying you are. My favourite part is when the tweet reaches a certain level of popularity—and it has all three years—somebody eventually goes, ‘Who is this person, never heard of him.’ And when you start getting those tweets, that’s when you know it’s going good, things are heating up.

Everybody says, ‘How could Superior not be number one with the name,’ but I would hazard a guess that the name Superior has something more to do with how it’s the highest and the furthest west. But I try not to get into the weeds with people on that. Anybody who has been to Lake Superior knows it’s beautiful, of course, but it’s not very useful. It’s really cold all the time.

People’s opinions are interesting, but, at times, sad. It’s sad that people would think that Lake Erie deserves to be number one. Anybody who knows anything knows it’s not true.

Ontario has an argument, to a certain degree. If you’ve ever been to the Sandbanks beaches, it’s beautiful around there. And a lot of Canadians have a bias against Lake Michigan because it has an American-centric name, but Lake Michigan is just gorgeous. Very Lake Huron-like. Some people want to make the argument that they’re the same body of water technically, I don’t go in for that.

AV: I think when people think Lake Ontario they think of what Lake Ontario is right around Toronto or Hamilton.

DW: Justifiably. But that’s not fair to the lake, there’s a whole top area that’s much better than those areas.

I try not to argue too much. People have their passionate beliefs, but they are wrong. By and large, my ranking is correct. I would die on the hill for it.

AV: You’ve mentioned before that you don’t really like to explain why you’ve put certain lakes over others. Is there a particular reason for that, or you don’t necessarily want to get into it with people, given the amount of people that reply to the tweet.

DW: I don’t think it’s very constructive. I don’t feel any need to defend it because it’s just one person’s opinion. All year long, I’m thinking about the Great Lakes, their movement, what’s going on. Maybe something will happen eventually that would change the ranking, but I don’t know what it is. I just put the list up and that’s it, that’s my duty done.

AV: Earlier you talked about swimming conditions. What is it that you take into account that makes the ranking the way that it is?

DW: This is tricky. This is stuff that I don’t love to get into, but I do think it’s a general sense of the usefulness of the lake. Beauty is a really important part of the equation. In general, it’s an ineffable quality that is in the zeitgeist. This year, for example, Lake Michigan featured heavily in the show Station 11, where it has a sort of mythic quality. That almost put it into a more prominent position, but in the end it didn’t feel right. It still felt like it had to be Huron, Superior, Michigan.

AV: One of your tweets from a previous year said that Lake Erie was last, by a lot. Not that I’m a Lake Erie apologist, but what is it about Lake Erie that has it so firmly in last place?

DW: I’m not particularly fond of any of the cities on Lake Erie, I have found the swimming to be lacklustre, I’m not fond of that part of Ontario.

AV: Have your feelings about a particular lake changed since since you started doing the rankings?

DW: It’s possible that a decade ago, I would have felt the same way as people that think Lake Michigan should be lower. Michigan really came up for me in my 20s when I spent a lot of time there. I’m a lot more fond of Lake Ontario even now than three years ago when I first did the first ranking. But they’re all great—fourth out of five is still pretty good. It’s really going to be something if the ranking ever moves, I wonder if it will.

AV: Is there anything that could push one ahead of the other? I see that there was like a Lake Superior account that was tweeting at you about the ranking and saying that it wanted to make some moves.

DW: People say to me, ‘Oh, how could you ignore the Lake Superior tweet?’ That sounds like a person pretending to be a lake. I’m a grown man, using his own name, ranking the Great Lakes. A guy pretending to be a lake, does that sound like an authority to you? Nonsense.

AV: How do you feel about people who are trying to throw in completely off-the-board picks to be included in the ranking? They seem to take the “great” name very liberally. 

DW: There’s always someone who wants to tell you that Great Slave Lake or Great Bear Lake exists, we all know that. That’s not what we’re talking about though.

AV: It’s pretty definitive. People kind of have to accept that these ones are the Great Lakes, because they’re called that. As a society, we’ve acknowledged that these ones are the Great Lakes.

DW: I was writing a song the other day with a guy from the U.K., and I was telling him about the ranking. And I said, ‘You know of the Great Lakes, right?’ And he said, ‘Of course.’ This is a guy who grew up on the Isle of Wight in the U.K., and he knew immediately. So, these are important lakes, right? He’s never heard of Great Slave Lake, let’s put it that way.

**

Well, Lake Erie, better luck next year.

Categories
Cottage Life

Nature Canada leads campaign to designate PEC as a National Marine Conservation Area

Along the shore of Prince Edward County (PEC), the waters of Lake Ontario serve as a hotspot for bird watchers, nature lovers, and adventure seekers. But without safegaurds, this may not last. Lake Ontario is one of the least protected of North America’s Great Lakes, making it vulnerable to land development, runoff pollution, and invasive species. Nature Canada plans to change that.

In early March, the environmental organization launched a campaign calling on the provincial and federal governments to deem the region’s waters a National Marine Conservation Area (NMCA).

“Brighton to Wolf Island is the region that we’re looking at because it’s really important for a lot of biodiversity,” says Kelsey Scarfone, a policy and campaign manager with Nature Canada.

Main Duck Island
Photo by John Brebner

Similar to a land conservation area, the purpose of a NMCA is to achieve ecological sustainability in the area, promoting awareness and understanding, while also creating enjoyable experiences for visitors, says the Parks Canada website.

Blanding's Turtle
Photo by Ian Dickinson

The PEC area is of particular interest to Nature Canada because its home to 50 at-risk species, including the Blanding’s Turtle, Piping Plover, and the American Eel. It’s also an important location for migrating birds and butterflies, Scarfone says. “In the context of the Great Lakes, there’s such a dense population around them that little pockets of biodiversity hotspots, like the waters around the South Shore, are really key to protect because it’s a system that’s under a lot of pressure.”

On top of safeguarding the area, the NMCA would provide new resources for scientific study on fish habitats. Plus, the waters in the area are home to hundreds of shipwrecks, making it a historic and culturally significant location, Scarfone says.

If the area is designated a NMCA, it’ll prevent extractive and destructive practices from disturbing the ecosystem, such as bottom trawling, lake bed mining, oil and gas extraction, and dumping.

What it won’t change is how cottagers use the area, Scarfone says. The waters will still be open to recreational use, including swimming, paddling, surfing, motorboats, and even commercial fishing.

Stand-up Paddleboarder
Photo by Raymond Hui

“The ways that people interact with the lake will mostly stay the same,” Scarfone says. “In fact, it would bring a lot of reassurance and excitement to cottagers to know that all of the beauty and the reasons that they come to this area and go to the cottage is going to be preserved for future generations.”

Community groups have been advocating for several years to convert the area into a NMCA, Scarfone says. That’s what caught Nature Canada’s attention. The organization is lobbying Canada’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change as well as Ontario’s Ministry of Environment, Conservation, and Parks, to make the designation happen.

“It’s a federal designation with Parks Canada, but because the Great Lakes are a shared jurisdiction between the provincial and federal governments, there would need to be a negotiated agreement between the province and Parks Canada to actually establish the site,” Scarfone says.

If the site were established, it would contribute to the federal government’s goal of conserving 25 per cent of Canada’s land and 25 per cent of its waters by 2025. “There’s actually a new proposed conservation reserve that’s in the final stages of being established on the south shore of Prince Edward County,” Scarfone says. “The National Marine Conservation Area could really complement existing work to date to protect this area.”

Photo by Corey Phillips

Setting up a NMCA won’t happen overnight. There will be consultations with Indigenous groups and local landowners before the designation is pushed through, Scarfone says. She predicts that it could take three to four years.

In the meantime, if you’re interested in supporting Nature Canada’s NMCA efforts, you can send a letter of support to both the provincial and federal governments through the organization’s website.

Read more: Documentary reveals plastic pollution a problem in Lake Ontario

Which Great Lake are you? Take our quiz

6 gorgeous cottages in Prince Edward County