Official Business

We did two cleanups in two days, and thanks to Julia we did it looking the part. She designed our new Great Lake Cleaners shirts — logo, slogan, and all. Now that we actually looked like a crew, we hopped on our bikes both days (shirts on, bike trailer hitched) to clean the waterways around our neighbourhood, hauling debris out by the cartload.

Sunday, Julia and I cleaned a stretch of the Speed River: we pulled 20 kg of heavy, industrial plastic submerged in the water or discarded on the shore. Our small bike trailer was overflowing and it took two trips to remove the debris from the riverbank.

The next day, with my kid along, we were back at the turtle pond near the West End Community Centre and its neighbouring creek — the ponds that constantly overflow with metal parts. We found two more shopping carts: a full-size one completely submerged that took real effort to raise, and a smaller one tracked a good distance up the creek. Both went back to the grocery store where they belong. The pond, as ever, keeps restocking.

Here’s the thread tying both days together (other than our cool shirts): the ponds drain into the creek, the creek into the river, and the river runs toward the lake. Every cart and every bag we pull upstream is debris or leached chemicals that never makes it downstream. The lake starts here.