My Watermark is Mattagami River, Ontario.

When I was younger, we were always around water and always playing in the swamps. We used to play in the mine tailings, which we now know are very toxic. But it was a lot of fun for us play. We used to cross the creeks, which are now very toxic as well.

However, it was a lot of fun for us to play along the creeks, which ran through the mine tailings. It made the creeks like ‘jello.’ We would then stand bare feet on the ‘jello,’ and we play on it, which of course was very toxic. At the time, there was nothing in the creeks anymore. Everything was dead, and there was no vegetation. Those areas just look very sandy now, almost like a desert.