A Lively Source of Real Estate & Community News
August 2000
Water, Water Everywhere...
I
But dare we drink it?
can’t remember a time when water was such a where I left significant pieces of my intestinal tract. hot topic. With the recent tragedy involving We drank countless litres of drinking water per Walkerton’s water supply, we are all suddenly day riding through various desert and mountain tuned in to the safety of our drinking water. regions and locating our “fuel” always seemed to It’s ironic that we live in Wasaga Beach, home of take so much of our energy. the world’s longest freshwater beach, and yet only Imagine living in a town where one of your a fool would wander down to the shores of highest living expenses is purchasing your water Georgian Bay and drink the water. daily from the local horse-drawn water wagon. In Our planet, when seen from space, seems wealthy parts of Columbia, it was cheaper to buy Coca Cola in water. However, most of this bounty is than water! oceanic and therefore too salty to consume. We in Canada are spoiled Only 2.5 per cent of all the globe’s water is by what the international freshwater, and two-thirds of community calls our “blue that is locked away in icecaps gold.” We have about 20 per and glaciers. The tiniest cent of the world’s We percentage—less than one freshwater supply in our hundredth of one percent—is twisting rivers and countless Are drinkable and renewable lakes. annually through precipitation. In the 21st century, one of Water: Each year, two-thirds of our our country’s greatest challenges will Percentage of the planet’s river water pours into be deciding whether we treat our human body that is the seas during floods and bountiful harvest as a gift that the rest water: 70 another one-fifth flows in remote of the world can share in or as a Number of days the areas like the Amazon and the commodity to be traded average person can Arctic. internationally. Will we become the It seems we’ve been dealt a Saudi’s of the world’s drinking water? survive without water: 3 tough hand and yet I can’t bring And locally, will we finally myself to feel sorry for recognize that we need to start looking humankind. We’ve stacked the deck against hard at our factories, our farms, our own ourselves. backyards—to see if we can correct the wrongs We’ve been manipulating the world’s waterways we’ve committed and to set a new standard for our for centuries and our arrogance at trying to manage water practices? nature’s balance is coming back to haunt us. We’ve Mary and I get our water from a drilled well, like stopped the flow of mighty rivers, diverted others, many others here in town. And when the water turned deserts into lakes and drained water from rises in the Nottawasaga River every Spring, we seas until they are nothing more than dried-up routinely test the water. We are lucky enough to be seabeds left with a harvest of toxic salts and able to get results back telling us about the quality chemicals. And yet we continue to complain when of our drinking water. But it makes me think our water levels fluctuate wildly and our boats can globally for a moment. no longer make it past the mouth of the river! It reminds me of the countless people who Having travelled a great deal, I feel the single touched our lives along our meandering route south greatest crime against humanity is the fact that over and the nasty water they continue to consume daily. one billion people still lack safe drinking water. It is through geographic—and sometimes During our 34-month bicycle journey from the political—misfortune that they were not blessed Arctic to Argentina, Mary and I often got with what we took for granted until Walkerton intestinally pummeled by drinking the local water. opened our eyes: the right to have access to clean Mexico, Belize, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa and safe drinking water. Sadly, we are reaping what Rica, Ecuador and Peru come to mind as places we have sown.
—Bruce
Worth Checking Out In August 1st—Ojibway 4th— Way @ Nancy Island. 1:30 pm. Contact: 705-429-2728 1st—Jazz in the Park @ Nancy Island (7 pm) 2nd—British Millennium Festival Concert @ Nancy Island (7 pm) 4th—I Mother Earth with See Spot Run Concert: The Dard 5th—Georgian Bay Poker Run (call Chamber 429-2247) 6th—British Millennium Festival Concert (Nancy Island @ 7 pm) 12th—Big Sugar Concert : The Dard 14th—Wasaga Golden Oldies Cruise Night & Nancy Island 15th—Jazz in the Park @ Nancy Island (7 pm) 18th—Jeff Healey Concert: The Dard 18th-20th—Beach Cruize Corvette Weekend. 22nd—Jazz in the Park @ Nancy Island (7 pm) 24th—Constellation Sensation @ Nancy Island 8:30 pm 24th -27th—Nokia Canadian Nationals Beach Volleyball at it's best @ Beach 1 Compiled for happy clients by:
Bruce Johnson Sales Representative
Mary Johnson Assistant RE/MAX of Wasaga Beach Inc.
1263 Mosley St., Box 490 Wasaga Beach, ON L0L 2P0 email: brumar@simcoe.net www.thehomehunt.com Tel: 705-429-4500