OPIRG’s Speed River Paddle Cleanup

The massive overnight storm that washed over the city left the Speed high and the colour of hot chocolate by the time we showed up early in the morning for OPIRG Guelph’s Speed River Paddle cleanup. The OPIRG team was lovely and let us use a canoe during the cleanup.

The storm’s contribution was easy to pick out. Wind and rain move a city’s loose material all at once, off streets and parking lots and into the storm sewers, and the river collects it at the first bend or strainer that will hold it. We filled two bags from the canoe without going far.

Our kid had a great eye for spotting the light bulbs, styrofoam and plastic bottles the cattails were hiding. We grabbed as much as we could before it could drift downstream.

The metal fence we found half submerged in the shallows took the longest to pull out: a full panel of wire mesh, roughly the length of our canoe and twice as wide. We worked it loose and moved the canoe underneath a few inches at a time until it was balanced across the gunwales. There was room for only one person to sit in the canoe, so I hopped on the fence suspended above the canoe and we paddled downstream two kilometres to make it back to the landing spot.

The metal fence went on top of our Elantra to the metal recycler, and with the metal our boat crew pulled out over 11 kg of debris from the river. It was a great experience, and we got ice cream at the end.

Before the storm, we pulled a bike out of the Avon, which runs to the Thames and to Lake St. Clair. After the storm, we pulled a whole fence from the Speed, which runs to the Grand and to Lake Erie. Different rivers, one storm, similar debris, and the same lake at the end.