My Watermark is St. Noras Lake, Ontario.

It's important to me because I want to protect it. I grew up going to my cottage at St. Noras Lake to swim which is near Minden. I loved swimming and canoeing there and it became apart of my identity and now i really love being apart of water and near water.

I didn’t swim in Lake Ontario until two summers ago when my friend from the United States came over and we were both excited to go swimming in the lake for the first time. So we went to Woodbine beach and realised that the e coli levels were too high to swim.

I couldn’t believe it because I’ve never been to a lake where you couldn’t swim. The water was so polluted we saw a dead fish in the water and were encouraged not to touch it because of the dangers it possessed. Which was really hard to come to terms with and realising the disappointment that I couldn’t show my friend the experience of the water. And how important it was to me to share that experience together.