My Watermark is the North Saskatchewan River, Alberta.

I was born in Edmonton and I have a lot of family in the Foothills. My grandparents live on the river and they were on a flood plain. In the winter, my grandpa would flood the river with his hose and create a skating rink for us on the river. I learned how to skate out there on the curling rink. My mom would tell me stories about when she was a kid – she grew up where we were out in the country – and how the river would freeze for days in the right way and they could skate for kilometres.

As a 14 or 15-year-old kid, it was exciting to canoe the North Saskatchewan River and paddle the rapids. It was just exciting and beautiful. The river is beautiful and it's what feeds all of us. "If we mess it up what are we going to do?" It hosts life in so many ways, it's beautiful to look at, it has a beautiful sound. It's important to me because it's what feeds all of us as animals, humans included. If we mess those up, I don't know what we're going to do – we'll lose that.