My name is Leslie Ince-Mecer and I work with the RBC Office of the Ombudsman, that’s over at 20 King West. My background? My family is in Trinidad, family in Egypt, but born in England, living in Toronto.

I’ve traveled to many areas, but the water body that I have a personal connection to is the Caribbean. So we take pretty much for granted when you have a beach at your doorstep, you sorta of ignore that water body. It is there all the time, but it is not freshwater. In the Caribbean, there is water pressure problems so sometimes you have water, sometimes you don’t, sometimes you have to bottle water in, bring it in, truck it in. So it’s that fact of taking for granted the availability of water.

The body of water that I love in the Caribbean is all of the beaches throughout the south part of the Caribbean - this is Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, moving all the way up to Jamaica. My personal story of the Caribbean is just that it is a place of love and commitment and people getting together. It’s always around these bodies of water. The water bodies are places of community, places of connection, places where stores are exchanged, relationships grow. So it’s very important to maintain these bodies of water available and just to continue their strength for the next generation.