My Watermark is McAmmas Pool, Nova Scotia.

I spent most of my childhood living almost exactly along the Antigonish Town/County Line. My street, Grandview Drive, was on the edge of town, but overlooked the entire town, to the south, and Antigonish Harbour, to the north. We lived where the subdivisions met farmland and that farmland met the Ocean.

My waterbody is McAmmas Pool, which is where West River empties into the Antigonish Harbour and the Northumberland Strait. I recall so many memories playing along the banks of McAmmas, like making "rafts" out of fallen trees or trying to catch gaspereau (alewife) with our hands. While I have many very positive memories playing in the magical place, one other memory sticks out the most.

It was August 2002 and everyone in my neighbourhood was heading down to the "train bridge" to go swimming. It was that train bridge was what really linked us to the water. We would always go to the bridge, in any weather or season, to just hang out or go on some new adventure. As I was saying... McAmmas Pool, beneath the train bridge, was really helping the Grandview Drive folks cool off on what was one heck of a hot August day, when some of us started feeling an itch on our bodies after swimming. Some of us kept swimming, but others, including myself, weren't interested in trading in the heat for a mysterious rash. It's hard to recall the exact happenings after that, but the mystery of the rashes, at the time remained a mystery and that concern about the quality of the water always lingered in my mind.

More recently, after learning more about my waterbody and the most likely impacts on recreational water quality, I started looking into possible culprits. I always knew there was a waste water treatment plant near my house, but I has assumed that the water was always treated before being dumped back into the watershed. I have no evidence to support that my friends and I were impacted by sewage discharge in our swimming waters, but combined sewage overflows do happen and often go un-reported.

Would I swim in McAmmas Pool today? Probably not, but its running waters played a vital role in getting me outside to explore and learn about my watershed.