My Watermark is Horseshoe Lake, Ontario.

When I was a kid, probably around 6 or 7 years old, we were up in Parry Sound, Horseshoe Lake. We’ve had a cottage there since I was a little kid. It’s in a horseshoe shape, and it’s pretty big but not overly big.

This waterbody is really diverse, in the sort of lay of the land. There’s part of it, where it is really deep, and narrow bodies of water with cliffs on the side. There’s also a big jumping rock that we used to jump off of as kids. It is about a forty to fifty foot cliff, and the water underneath it is about 100 feet deep. On the other side of the lake, there are marshy spots for fishing. Lot of really large and small mouthed bass. The other part of the lake was always nice and crystal clear.

One of my favourite memories when I was that age was taking out the canoe with my brother and sister, and intentionally tipping it, emptying it, then tipping it over again. It was a great time. Always being able to drink and fish in the water, never having to worry about it was always great.

As a kid, I tried to to spend as much time there as possible. As soon as the weekends were around in the summer time, we would leave on Friday nights, and spend almost every weekend. Then, in the summer I would spend at least a month- two months there.

My dad still has the place there, so I go up as much as I can. The lake has changed a bit since I was a kid. It’s not as safe to drink the water now. We used to take the water right out of the lake, and pump it into the house, and drink it. No we can’t do that. We have to sanitize it, and treat the water before we drink it. The other thing is the smell; there is more of an odour to the water. Other than that, it is pretty much the same.

But you can tell that if we don’t stop doing the things that we are doing to the water, we are going to make it un-drinkable, and un-fishable.

My parents, our neighbours and I have talked about it before. There is a cottage association where they try to address the issue. There was a dam at one point which was having an effect on the ecology of the lake, I’m not exactly sure what they did, but they fixed it in some way.