 Welcome to our celebration of World Water Day. We have a wonderful group of people that are going to speak to us and speak with us. But before we get to them, I'd like to offer an acknowledgement of where we are. And I always do that when I'm on Zoom, I tell people where I am, and then I ask them to make an acknowledgement on their own to where they are. Okay, so we are situated on the traditional land of the Nishnabek people. The Nishnabek include the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi First Nations, collectively known as the Three Fires Confederacy. We dedicate this gathering to honoring their history and culture and are committed to moving forward in the spirit of reconciliation and respect with all First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people. Well, having said that, I want to welcome you all to Simkel County Congress. It's the International Water Day celebration, and we're going to start with my student, Vicki Mene, who is going to lead us off. Go ahead, Vicki, take the floor. Oh, bojo. Thank you, everybody. I'm just going to start a screen share here. And I always wonder if people can see this screen. So just give me a second here. I'm not the best with Zoom. All right, so everybody can see that? Perfect. So what I'm going to talk about is the Indigenous perspective on water, and what I have there is a giga gana wind dom in the bit, and what that means is all of us, all of us will protect the water and look after it. And that is actually an inclusive statement that transcends all of the different ways that we dissect ourselves or that we divide our communities. It transcends identity politics, I guess, is what I'm trying to say, and it really is about us coming together as human beings to protect the water. I'm going to extend a little bit Doug's land acknowledgement. I am from Bosley First Nation, which is in the, which is in Georgian Bay. It's about a half an hour from Penetangua, Sheena, Midland. My whole way of life since I was a child growing up on reserve is around water. Our community is situated around water. Fishing is a big industry within our community. We are only accessible by boat and sometimes by ice road. We are considered, even though we're in central Ontario, we are considered an isolated community. Those are my three kids there, by the way, they were much smaller and I was much smaller than you as well. But that's our Indian maiden and we are getting a new boat. So if you've ever been to Christian Island, you know, I actually suggest that everybody go to Christian Island and just be able to attune yourself to the experience that my people go through every single day of their life by traveling by either ice or skiddy or Hoovercraft or boat during those weather conditions. So Bosley First Nation is home to 750 people plus over, over the winter months. But in the summer, we can see an inflation of that population to about 12,000 or sorry, not 12,000 people with our cottage, with our cottagers and tourism. We have signed multiple treaties with the crown. And so Lake Simcoe is actually in our treaty to territory. It's closest to the Williams Treaty, but also multiple pre-confederation treaties as well. The history of the Anishinaabe people, and I am Anishinaabe in this area, is the history of the Chippewa Tri-Council, which is the people of Georgina Island, Rama and Bosley First Nations. So it is really important to understand that we were once one tribe. And due to a number of different, due to colonization, we were separated and put into three different bands. So very Aurelia and surrounding areas really is in the territory of the Chippewa Tri-Council. And so I'd like to acknowledge Rama and Georgina Island. And I'm sorry that I can't speak on behalf of those committee, or those communities and their water issues tonight, but they do definitely have their own challenges with respect for water that need to be addressed, especially with Georgina Island and the fact that Georgina Island is directly in Lake Simcoe. They do have a story to tell, and I'm sorry that I'm not able to speak on their behalf tonight. So before I go any further, what I would like to talk about is first acknowledging my first teacher, Bodweden Bunn Binasee, or Bodweden Binasee Bunn, and Bidosa Gay Bunn. So remembering Josephine Mandaman Bunn and Eddie Benton Binasee Bunn. So a lot of people don't know that Eddie Benton Binasee, who has passed on now just recently, he was actually the motivation behind the Mother Earth water walks. And most people who are involved with water in any sort of indigenous capacity, they know of the Mother Earth water walks. So Josephine and Eddie were really, really, really worked together on those Mother Earth water walks. And so I want to remember Josephine Mandaman as well, who has passed on just over a year now, I think almost two years now she's been gone and she left a legacy for water. And one of the things that she said was, to tell people to continue to love the water, to work from a place of love for the water. And that's what all water activism is about. It's about creating that sort of sense of love. So I like to acknowledge them because little did I know that my water activism, and most people know me from Site 41, I was arrested, charged, slapped within a lawsuit and an injunction for Site 41. And a lot of my water activism relates to the work that Josephine and Eddie had started already, although at Site 41, I didn't know Josephine Mandaman at all and I didn't meet her until later on. So, but it was really being inspired by this work of understanding the spiritual relationship with water. So dump site 41, most of you know it's, we're in a, I think about our 12th year now since this happened, it was in 2009, but why was it successful? And that's really what I'm here to talk about tonight is why was Site 41 successful? It had been challenged for over 25 years. First Nations people came sort of at the 11th hour and that was the, over here you see the five women who started the protest camp at Site 41. And one of the things that I found was the reason why it was successful is because it created a community. It created a community around water where everybody had this place, everybody had a role, everybody had a place, nobody was excluded. It was really coming together and finding our commonality as human beings and being able to work for water. I mean, and it definitely was not without its challenges. There were a lot of different challenges with Site 41 and sometimes interpersonal challenges, which if you're a water activist, you probably know what I'm talking about because you don't do activists without having those kinds of activism without having those kinds of challenges. And so I'll talk a little bit more about that later on, but that was really some of the core attributes to why that movement, why Dumpsite 41 was stopped. And so it actually heavily relied upon this sort of intersection of science and spirit and faith and hope that was born from that intersection. And so with respect to that as well, we also kind of married traditional knowledge with Western knowledge. And so that's a lot of what you won't see in the things that have been published about Site 41. You don't see a lot of that. You see, but that really needs to be brought into the dialogue about Site 41 because those are ultimately the keys to why it was successful in the first place. And I really think that the more that we look at Dumpsite 41, it actually creates a model for water activism for protecting watersheds in any area that you are. One of the things that Indigenous people brought to the Site 41 movement wasn't just the traditional knowledge, but it was also the treaty rights. And so when I was in court defending myself against a lawsuit, it was basically on treaty rights and the duty to consult and accommodate in how we actually were able to resolve that lawsuit. And so Indigenous people have a lot to contribute to water movements. And they are actively, I actually don't know an Indigenous person who is not involved in some way, shape, or form with water. I mean, whether it's, you know, like even something as simple as educating their family or trying to reduce their water consumption or even trying to get clean drinking water for their community, which is another issue that we're not going to talk about tonight, but it is a very serious one. And we know right now that First Nations people continue to go without clean drinking water. And a lot of them are in Ontario. So that's a major, major consideration, but I don't know any Indigenous people that are not somehow involved with protecting water in some way, shape, or form, or at least having some level of water consciousness. And so the harder part of all of this is getting the, is getting the politics on board with that. And so what we saw at Site 41 where there were really, really heavy, intensive lobbying campaigns. And the interesting thing about it was that what came out of Site 41 by the time August, 2009 happened was that people actually, even though they did wear their party hats, whether they were the Green Party or the Conservatives or the Liberals, everybody kind of still wore their party hats but was able to come together beyond the realm of party politics. And that's one of the things that we need to continue to capitalize on for water activism and protecting watershed. We have to be able to build that dialogue that is furthering and advancing these causes beyond party politics. So what is the Indigenous perspective on water? And I'm only going to tell you one thing. Water is life. If we're not doing this for life, then why are we doing it at all? The Indigenous worldview is heavily entrenched into how we relate with other beings on the earth and whether it's water, whether it's fire, whether it's a tree, whether it's an animal, whether it's a plant, it really doesn't matter. It is all life. And so the central premise, not just for Nishinaabe people, but for even indigenous worldviews that are studied abroad, their central premise also is life and the protection and the extension of life into the future. And so the worldview around water is about protecting life. And so you see this, you can Google this online and people see it all the time, but we don't really understand what it means or what does it mean in water's life? What does it mean in water's life? It means about being conscious enough to understand that when you take an action or do any sort of action in your life that there is a water cost to that. And so what we need to do now is actually be looking at and understanding, I guess, this idea of water footprint, but also it is relational and accountable. And so, and I guess in that way, in understanding the water footprint is understanding our own accountability to water. There are reciprocal relationships that take place. I give to the water and the water gives to me, and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in a few minutes. But we understand that as indigenous people, every step that we take, we affect future generations. And every step that we take is because of the generations before us. And we affect all of life around us in this present moment. And so that is a very, very important way to look at water, but not just water, but about life. And I think what it relates most to this kind of understanding is agrarianism. If you look at how that very, very earth-based mentality is entrenched in that. It's almost this, I wouldn't say it's the same, but there are some similarities there that we can look at. So this was the quarry water walk in 2017. This was really about what's happening with, what's happening with the expansion permits up on French's Hill. I don't know if any of you know about that, but there is, they're really trying to make a mega quarry here and it's just up the road from site 41, like less than two kilometers. So what we did was we did this water walk. We actually did two water walks. Actually, this is the first one. And what you see here is, you see is a community of people who come together to protect the water that this issue was still ongoing. The Alliston aquifer is at threat right now. That's a major, major issue that needs to be looked at. With respect to the aquifer itself, you know, Dr. Bill Shoddick, and I don't know if any of you know, but Dr. Bill Shoddick and Dr. Sherry are actually working on hydrogeological studies right now, testing the purity of this water because the samples from the Alliston aquifer, which actually goes towards Lake Simcoe have been tested by Dr. Bill Shoddick against the cleanest layers of Arctic glacial ice that are six to 8,000 years old. And so this aquifer really, really is worth protecting. The fact that the underground filtration system can take, it takes 25 years for the water to get from the sky to the deepest levels of the aquifer. And by the time it gets to the aquifer, it's pure. And so I drink it at home. I actually go to the flow in Elmville. I just went there yesterday, actually. And we go through about 30 gallons of water. And it's kind of getting hard on my back to lift all that water. But, you know, I'm hoping my sons are going to pitch in at Sochai and help me carry that water. But we go there and we drink this water at home. And actually, once you start drinking the water from the aquifer, you actually cannot go back to drinking tap water. You notice the significant changes in just how you're drinking it. So I'm hoping to do a study on the water this summer, if I can, to see how people are using that flow in Elmville to how many times they're using it. And what kind of benefits it provides to the broader community, especially with respect to what's happening in the threats that are on it. And so the quarry is only one threat, but there are multiple different threats to the water. So we need to also consider that. We also need to consider that Lake, Lake Simcoe, the Allison aquifer and Lake Huron, they're all interconnected. And so what happens to one in Jordan Bay, for instance, will happen to the other once, once water gets contaminated in one area, it goes through the whole entire hydrogeological system. So that is something that we also need to consider. And especially like for Bosley First Nation, you know, like our water comes from Georgia Bay, our drinking water comes from Georgia Bay. And we're lucky that we have a water treatment facility, but we just thought that in the early nineties. And so I still wonder whether or not a lot of the health problems that we're seeing in our population is due to the fact that we didn't have no water treatments facility until the early mid nineties. So that's something else to consider. Water miracles. So I call this water miracles. And since site 41, I've been heavily involved with water activism locally and abroad internationally. And what I've done is actually use water to connect with other indigenous people across the world. And really it was about creating solidarity with indigenous people who are struggling for water around the world. And so in the first picture, what you see is the Coyson and this, I'm going to actually mention Jillian Von Longstorf and her daughter who actually traveled to South Africa and took the site 41 water from here over there. And what you're seeing there is a ceremony that is being done by the Coyson with the water that we sent. And the interesting thing about this was it'd be the day that when this actually, when the water actually went to South Africa Cape Town was actually was actually experiencing a drought. And it was so bad that the municipal tax were going to be shut off in Cape Town. And what we did over here was we gathered the women, we did a ceremony for the water and then we sent it on its way. And you know, you're kind of worried about, you know, how do you get this water from Canada to another country? You know, is it going to go through customs? All of these different things, right? These logistical things that barriers that you're thinking about, but literally we had no problem and it made it. But the thing was, as soon as the plane touched the ground that in Cape Town, it started to rain. And it actually rained so much that they're, that they didn't need to turn off the, the taps anymore. So that was a huge, a huge, a huge, a huge affirmation that what we were doing was good work and building that solidarity amongst each other is good work and that we needed to continue that it by no means means that the struggles for the Poisson are finished or complete. They actually walked with the water twice and we sent the water there twice already. But, you know, I continue to think about them. So the other picture there is me and Honduras in 2019. And I actually met with the length. And I wanted to actually put up a picture of Berta Casteris here because Berta Casteris was murdered for the work as an environmental activist in Honduras. And I actually went to her house and, and I met with her, her daughter and I went to her organization co-team. And I didn't put the pictures here, but I don't know if any of you remember, but there was a water walk in 2019 organized by Amy Grenier through the Simcoe County district school board. And that water walk actually had over 900 students participate. And we were so lucky that we got to put the site 41 water in that water walk. And it was carried by a Bosley First Nation youth. Actually it was carried by a Bosley First Nation youth, her mother and her grandmother. And it wasn't my family, it was another family, but we're so proud of them for doing that. And so when you're walking with the water, you're energizing the water, you're praying with the water. And I think there's, there, I don't, I think his name is Masha Mota. He did studies on this water, right? And he showed that, oh, if you send the water love it reacts, right? And he's basically showing that water is alive. And I'm not sure if I got the name wrong. So please forgive me for that. But when, when we do water ceremonies, which I'm not going to share because we don't put our ceremonies online. And so I can't, I can't talk about that. But, but when we do water ceremonies, you know, these are ceremonies that are stealing that water up with love. And so that is the same idea. And then it was just affirmed by science. That's how Anishinaabe people look at, we've been doing this for thousands of years. And now science is confirming that this, that this is what's happened. So when we're, when, when I was in Honduras and I was carrying this little jar of water with me everywhere that I went and we were going up into the mountain and we're going into the length of community. So this is actually the length of community. And they were actually fighting a hydro dam. And what happened was they were actually being criminalized and murdered for protecting the water. Their whole community was being criminalized and murdered by the Honduran government. And I witnessed firsthand some of the criminalization activities that were happening there when I was there. Because you could smell tear gas. You could hear firing. So there's a lot of civil unrest there. There's a lot of civil unrest there. There's a lot of civil unrest there. And they were fighting with the length of community. Their whole livelihood is about the water. They're right next to a river. And that river is what sustains their community. And so when I was there, this is the oldest grandmother in that community. And her name was Maria. And she was so happy to come forward. But one of the things was that when she came forward to accept the water, I was so happy to see her. I was in my hand and it started like the whole jar just started shaking. And I was like, wow, what's going on here? Right. And so what they did was they, they were so happy to have somebody acknowledge and validate their struggles. Something that they were going through. And that really is that miracle of solidarity and respect and support. And that's what they're doing today. And they're going to continue to help to continue to do what they're doing today. It by no means ended the hydroelectric dam that is going up. That is going to threaten their livelihood, but it definitely was something that gave them hope. And so what they did with that water was they took it to where that dam is and they put it in there and they gathered all of the women of their community to go and do that. So in this way, this was how us as Anishinaabe people over here can continue to do that. And so the water is gone all over the place. We've sent it to New Zealand. We've sent it to Monacai in Hawaii. And we sent it to Nepal. It's on to China. It's on to Japan. There's more pictures that can be shown here of the different places it's gone. And I'm just telling a little bit of the story. But it's gone to indigenous people everywhere who are struggling and standing up for water. And so the other thing is type E botulism. I'm going to, I hope I'm not Doug. You can tell it cut me off whenever you need to. Okay. So we did a water walk in, in, in, uh, 2015 or actually it was 2013. And what happened in Georgia Bay, and I'm not sure if any of you remember this was the outbreak of type E botulism that was killing the birds, the fish, the dogs, deer were washing up dead. Um, so it was an outbreak in Georgia Bay. So what we did was we, uh, did a water walk. And we walked around, um, 787 kilometers around Georgia Bay. And it really was about creating a movement of unity and trust and respect. It was about connecting and it's not being people with other indigenous people who also depend on Georgia Bay for life. So when the type E botulism, um, happened, it really adversely affected our communities. Most of our communities are fishing communities. Um, most of our dogs are showing up dead. It really got into the whole, uh, ecosystem. And so what happened was then we walked and it took about 17 days, but we walked and, and we completed that water walk. And these are some of the pictures here. A lot of different people took part. We didn't discriminate against anybody. We wanted to make sure that even if you were not an Ishtnabe that you had the ability to walk with us. And we were so grateful for the support that we got, and we were so grateful for the support that we got. And so we went through the United church. Uh, who put up the water walkers wherever we went. Um, actually, I think they also made a donations, but there were so many people who supported the water walk. All all throughout the municipalities and First Nations that we went through. Um, and so what happened after that water walk was that, um, it's. It actually the Bay froze over. Um, we didn't have ice and ice is something that we rely on in the wintertime to be able to travel on and off reserve. And we didn't, we hadn't had ice and something like four or five years, but that winter it froze so much that there was about five to six feet of ice, um, between Georgia, uh, between Christian Island and Cedar Point. And we were actually operating on there like highway 400. And then the next spring there was no more type of socialism. So I mean, you can, you can question what I'm saying. You know, you can, you can say, Oh, well, that's just coincidence or whatever. But for us, when we're walking with these, with these, um, with the water and when we're walking with Eagle staffs and we have faith in the spirit and faith in the creator, then we know that our prayers are going to be answered. So that is a huge part of it. Um, So my last slide here is so about protecting watersheds. If there's anything that I want you to take, um, to say, um, I think it's a really important part of it. Um, I think it's a great way from tonight. It's that we have to work together collaboratively. That includes indigenous people. Um, that should say Western. That should be, um, the intersection of Western philosophies and indigenous knowledge and science and spirit. Um, and what that does is actually it, it broadens your audience because you're giving somebody, you're giving everybody something that they can relate to. Um, uh, response. If it's just spirit alone, you won't get the same response because we have so many different ways that we, that we express ourselves and through our beliefs and our cultures and what have you. Um, learning about indigenous territories and rights. So this is something that I really, really critically, critically, uh, request of everybody. Um, to know the territory that you're on, but also to know the treaties that you're on. Um, and I think that that's a great way to work with indigenous people through activism. And I know there's a lot of different places that, uh, do courses on, on, on under, on just sort of creating understanding around, around working with indigenous groups. Um, because there are some things I'll take, for example, one, one example that I had was I was to appear at an OMB hearing. Um, without the support of my community. Uh, it was about a quarry and I found that correspondence was written on behalf of my first nation, that my first nation never sanctioned. And they asked me to come and I thought I was just coming to support. And then the next thing you know, I was there as a witness and, um, a participant. And so I had to actually leave and call my chief and tell my chief and we had to get our legal team involved. So we want to be able to avoid situations like that, where indigenous rights are being, um, inappropriately used, um, without our knowledge or consent. Um, so that's an important part. Uh, creating a community where everybody has a role in a place, but also the last one is the most important one is fundamentally shifting how we use water. Understanding that there's a water footprint, a human rights footprint and a carbon footprint of every single thing that we use. And so the more that we can return to our mother, the earth to support, to provide for us. Um, the better off, I think our communities are going to be in the more sustainable we're going to be. So I just want to leave it at that and I'll be around, uh, for this whole presentation to take questions, but I want to thank you all very much for your time and for your support. Uh huh. Meegwetch. Thank you very much for key. Um, there was one question that came. So, uh, if you have a question for the speakers, please put it on the chat and I'll ask it when at the end of the session that the speaker has. So there was one question, um, about whether or not there are still, um, prayer ceremonies at. Is that still going on now? Well, you know, I go there by myself actually probably once every couple of weeks and, um, there's big no trespassing signs there now. Um, so I actually can't go onto the site anymore. Um, so yeah, I'm kind of sad about that because I was literally arrested, charged and slapped with a lawsuit and an injunction and now I can't go there and pray anymore. But, you know, I guess that's, that's a little unfortunate, but we do actually have ceremonies. Um, we did a couple of them at the quarry. Um, the, the water walk did stop there where the sign is that says shoulder to shoulder. Um, so, I mean, we did, we still go by there all the time, but we don't, we can't have the ceremonies unless, um, we get proper permissions and what have you. Thank you for that. Thank you for sharing Vicki. That was wonderful. As always, your insight and your perspective on the world is so welcoming and open. It's very nice. And I've, since I've known you, you, we've just deepened and deepened our relationship through you and you teaching me so much about the world. So thank you again for that. Um, we're going to switch now to our second speaker, uh, George Moore, um, turns out he's not related to me at all. Even though my uncle's name was George Moore, but I guess there's a lot of moors, just like there's a lot of Wests. Um, in any case, George has been my co-conspirator and putting all this together. Those of you other speakers know George from his emails back and forth asking you for things, but he also is on our panel because he's a, he's a reverend. He's going to talk about the Christian perspective on water. So George, over to you. Thank you very much. And a good evening. And I'm speaking to you from, uh, Trudy 16 territory and, um, Vicki said that she was offering, uh, an indigenous perspective on water. And all I can really do is offer one person's perspective on water that has been shaped by, uh, my life in the, uh, in the church. Um, I want to share that I was raised in the boreal forest of Northern Ontario, a land of lakes and rivers and swamps and bogs and marshes and beaver dams. Water was everywhere. And I grew up with a very deep sense of its presence all around me. My Celtic ancestors, whether Christian or pagan held great reverend reverence for water. Indeed a reverence for all of the natural world and, um, visiting Ireland, uh, back in the nineties, I came across a sacred well. So there were sacred wells and springs that helped to, uh, connect, uh, my ancestors to the, to the sacred world. In the Judeo Christian tradition, water is a powerful symbol from the waters of creation. The natural world is created. The world becomes corrupted by sinful humanity and a great flow. It comes to cleanse the world through the waters of the red sea. The Hebrew people pass on to liberation from slavery in the waters of the Jordan. Jesus is baptized as he prepares to begin his ministry and Jesus offers living water to a Samaritan woman, someone seen as unclean and outside of Jesus, Jewish religion. Common to all of these stories is the motif of new beginnings. When the waters of creation, the universe comes into being. Waters of renewal cleans the earth so it can begin a new age. Waters of liberation mark the beginning of new life of freedom for the Hebrew people. Waters of baptism are part of the preparation of Jesus for the ministry he is about to begin. In the living water that Jesus offers a woman of Samaria is water of inclusion that allows her to experience that she is not outside of God's love and acceptance. Water have meaning. And all the waters in these stories to my mind have to be clean water, pure water, because it's only pristine water in my mind that can lead to new life. Polluted water cannot herald new life. In the biblical stories, God repeatedly offers the water that's necessary for life, the water of life. Canada's blessed with lots of water. We have the second most abundant renewable water sources in the world. We have more lakes than the rest of the world combined. But many people in Canada don't realize how radical this gift is. We have so much water that many of us take it for granted. Many believe that there will always be access to clean water. But we've learned that nothing is without limit. There was a limit to the bison, the passenger pigeon and the cod. This necessity of life has limits. And it must remain clean if it is able to sustain life . While there are a lot of references in the Bible to water, there's very little about protecting water. I was left scratching my head saying where in my background being raised in the church and studying theology that ever come across anything that talked about the sacredness of water and the need to protect water. In the topical index of the concordance for the new revised standard version of the Bible, there is a list of the uses of water. It's used for washing and ritual cleaning and drinking. It lists passages about God and water and water as a symbol. But the concordance does not mention the protection of water. Protection of water is there in the Bible. We'll get to it in just a few minutes. But it's not listed. And I guess that says a lot about the people that created the concordance and its topical list. And it says about the ancient biblical writers. I believe the protection of water provides a corrective to the passage in Genesis that says that humanity is to have dominion over the earth. I wish it read that we were supposed to have stewardship over the earth, but that's not the way it's generally translated. However, in the writing of the prophet Ezekiel, we have clear instructions to take care of the water and the earth. From the new revised standard version, when you drink of clear water, must you foul the rest with your feet? And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet and drink what you have fouled with your feet? And from the contemporary English version, some of you eat the greenest grass and trample what is left when you finish. Others drink clean water and then step in the water to make the rest of it muddy. That means my other sheep have nothing fit to drink. Ezekiel is not talking about sheep. Ezekiel is talking about the people of Israel. And reading this passage over 2,000 years later, we know that this passage also means all people. It means all animals. It means the plants upon which we depend. It's about the oneness of all that is. But we know that what is not good for healthy or healthy for humans cannot be good or healthy for other than human beings. All rely on an adequate supply of fresh clean water. We also know that supplies of fresh clean water are an essential part of ecosystems that provide our food. We also know that physical systems that provide shelter, places of rest and refreshment. Water is essential, precious, vital to living beings. The Bible uses the image of water to help us understand how much we need our God. Psalm 52 says, as a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, oh God. The relationship with God is essential, precious, and vital to us. Many people of faith regularly give credit to God for those things that are so wonderful, so mysterious, and so out of the ordinary, that they could never have come from human imagining. Love, courage, integrity, altruism, self-giving love known as agape. These are gifts of God, such by people of faith. For people of faith, water is a gift from God. A gift so wondrous, so precious, and we have to ask for this kind of gift, where can we offer our thanks? Where can we show our gratitude? This is a gift so essential that we can't live without it any more than a person of faith and live a full life without the relationship with God. Even before we ask God to bless water we are about to use, it's already sacred. It speaks to us about God's abundance, about God's complex world of relationships, of balance, of interdependence and interconnectedness, and maybe most of all, God's world of mystery. Water has meaning. Water has teaching. Unpacking our sacred texts, using new lenses of ecological awareness, help us to arrive at new understandings of what the texts can teach us. And that's most certainly a gift of God. Thank you. Thank you very much, George. That was beautiful and well said. And I really appreciate working with you on this day and on the other days we've been meeting. And I must say that you have enlightened me to how the world comes together regardless of text. It is about experience. And I think your own experiences really speak volumes to what we've been talking about in terms of water. And I think all of us have that same kind of feeling of water being such a presence in our lives. I mean, we're made of water, where our entire being is water. And undergirding all of this that I said is that simple little sentence that Vicki offered, water is life. That's it. It's very simple. Yet we make it so complex sometimes, over complex in some ways. No offense to our next speakers. But we're going to hear from scientists now and from people who are protecting the water on a daily basis. So it's important that we start with a traditional Anishinaabe perspective and then move to a Christian perspective because it's important that we're all not, we live in a very diverse society. That includes those people who dedicate their lives to science. And so with that I'm going to ask, I hope I don't pronounce your name. Again, or gin, Brian. I just did. It's again. Okay. So Dr. Brian Guin is a limnologist. And limnologists is someone who cares a lot about the water. Right. I mean, but, and he spent years becoming a doctor. I know I'm a doctor too, but a different kind of doctor, a doctor of philosophy, but it's, I know how long it takes to get a doctor. It's very, very hard to do. And so you work with the Lake Simcoe region conservation authority, which is a marvelous organization that is constantly looking out for the wellbeing of the lake and, and the watershed that the lake is around. I think Vicki said it well that all the water around us is connected together. It's not, this didn't all happen by accident. So, so Brian, I'll give you the floor now. And if anyone has questions of for George or, or Brian, I'll, I'll accept them in the chat. So please go ahead, Brian. Thank you very much. Steve, if I do this right. Hopefully that's sharing and there we go. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, as they said, the limnologist was just a fancy word for a lake scientist with Lake Simcoe region conservation authority. And we'll be speaking about today as some of the health of Lake Simcoe and some of the environmental and ecological trends we're seeing over the years since I've been with the authority since 2008. So traditionally, scientific monitoring on Lake Simcoe was under the jurisdiction of two provincial ministries. Ministry of the environment conservation and parks looks after offshore water quality and they have since the 1980s. So offshore water quality to look after algae, the plankton and pollution complaints, that sort of thing. The ministry of natural resources and forestry looks after everything fish related to and they've been monitoring those since the 1950s. This left a data gap in the lake monitoring, something called the near shore zone or the shallow water zone. Basically the part of Lake Simcoe that's shallower than 20 meters water depth, which makes it about two thirds of the lake area. And that's really what our role at the conservation authority is we look at the shallow water zone. And we also address the concerns of residents, what they're seeing, what their thoughts are. And we look at the issues that are moving into emerging issues. So things like aquatic plants on the lake, which are a large concern of the residents invasive species, climate change. And also the water quality of the shallow water habitat. So three key environmental stressors like Simcoe that are impacting the lake. And these are the three main ones that are many others. And these are the ones that are kind of widespread across the entire Great Lakes region. So the water quality is a nutrient that I'll be talking about tonight. When it gets into the water, it's the concentration, how much of it is getting into the water, how much of it is in the water. Also it causes algae and plant growth and that sort of thing. And can deteriorate water quality. Invasive species as a second one. Zebra mussels, quagga mussels are probably the two most famous or infamous ones. There's also invasive aquatic plants and also the impact of native biological communities in the lake. And the third major one is climate change, which is a global issue, but it's also affecting us here at the local level as well. So increasing water temperatures during the summertime, there's been a decrease by about a month in ice cover on Lake Simcoe relative to the 1850s. And also changes precipitation patterns. Now these three stressors don't act independently of each other. There's interaction between them. For example, climate change and warmer waters makes it easier for invasive species to survive. Changing precipitation patterns, change how water is delivered to the lake and phosphorus is delivered to the lake and how it's cycled in the lake. And also some invasive species can even change the cycling and nutrients in the lake, which is what has happened with zebra mussels and also quagga mussels. So the current lake management plan that we have is the Lake Simcoe production plan, which came into effect in June 2009. And from my aspect of it, from a lake-based perspective, my part of the plan is based on the health and sustainability of the cold water fishery. So cold water fish are things like lake trout, lake whitefish in the hearing. And I called cold water fish because when the lake warms up in the summertime, they tend to hang out in the deep water where it's cooler and they can't really tolerate warm water. So they hang out in the deep part of the lake in Kemp and Feld Bay, for example. And unfortunately, this is the part of the lake that tends to run out of oxygen algae and plants. When they decompose, they sink to the bottom of the lake and this consumes up oxygen and this leaves not enough oxygen for the fish to survive. So in late summer and early fall, the lake can run out of oxygen. So for a healthy and sustainable cold water fishery, we need to dissolve the oxygen concentration in the water of around seven milligrams per liter at the end of the summer. And because oxygen is related to algae and plants, which is related to phosphorus, when you back calculate this through, this is where this 44 tons of phosphorus per year loading objective comes from. So under the Lake Simcoe production plan, we're trying to limit phosphorus to about 44 tons going into the lake per year. So what is phosphorus and why do we care so much about it? It's a limiting nutrient. And if you're a gardener, you know you can add phosphorus to your garden to make your flowers and your vegetables grow. If you add it to your lawn, it can make your lawn green. But when it gets into water, the same thing that makes your lawn green can turn your lake or your river green, shown in this bottom picture here from Lake Erie. And that's an algal bloom that is, that happens frequently down there. So when too much phosphorus goes into a lake, it causes a problem called eutrophication, which is just a fancy word for nutrient enrichment. It causes excessive plant and algae growth. And then when these things die and decompose, this is where this reduced oxygen comes from. And that's why phosphorus is so integral to the Lake Simcoe production plan. So this diagram here just shows the major components of the phosphorus load. And Lake Simcoe is a little unique in that most lakes, they model how much phosphorus is coming in. At Lake Simcoe, we go out and we actually measure how much phosphorus is going in. So measuring it is a lot more accurate than running it through a mathematical model and trying to figure out what's going on. So we have teams that go out and they measure how much phosphorus we're finding in the tributaries and the rivers. And this captures things like runoff from urban areas, runoff from natural areas, so forests and wetlands, runoff from the agricultural areas and polders, such as the Holland Marsh, sewage treatment plants, septic systems, and even phosphorus that's attached to dust and rainfall in the atmosphere that falls into the lake. We record and we measure all these things and we use this to calculate the phosphorus load for Lake Simcoe. And it's an interesting fact that each year we collect more than 3 million data points that are used to calculate how much phosphorus is going into Lake Simcoe. So it's a very accurate way of trying to find out how much of this nutrient is going into the lake. So this graph just shows the phosphorus loads going into Lake Simcoe from year 2000 up to 2017. This is a hydrologic year. A hydrologic year is a little bit different from a calendar year and that starts in June and goes through to the following May. So for example, 2017 at the end of the graph, that captures from June 2017 through to May 2018. The height of the bars are the total phosphorus load in tons per year, so that's the height of those bars. And the different colors on the bars show the different sources of phosphorus which are going in. So the tributaries, which is that land runoff from urban areas, agricultural, natural areas and so on. That's the green color, also sewage treatment plants in red and atmospheric and blue, for example. The black line across the middle, that is the 44 ton loading objective. And you can see the bars are higher than that. But also in the background, there's that kind of icy blue color that almost looks like a mountain range. That is the volume of water which is coming in from the tributaries. So the amount of water from the rivers which are forcing in to Lake Simcoe. And you can see the years with the highest bars, for example, 2008, 2013 and 2017. Those are also the year with the highest flow volume going to the lake. And it's these high tributary flows, which are accounting for high loads. So there's some variability over the past 18 years going on in the amount of phosphorus which is being delivered to Lake Simcoe. And we don't just measure the amount of phosphorus which is going into the lake. We also measure the amount of phosphorus that's actually inside the lake water. So we go out, we collect lake samples. And we have these tested for phosphorus. So this graph on the bottom here now just shows the spring in Lake phosphorus concentration in micrograms per liter from 1980 through to 2018. You can see the overall trend is an improving one. It's going down. That's good. And over the last five years or so of this graph, the average is around 7.3 micrograms per liter. The provincial water quality objective for good water is anything less than 10 micrograms per liter. So we're actually meeting that in the lake. On the flip side of that is the dissolved oxygen. Dissolved oxygen has also shown an improving trend. So this is the concentration of dissolved oxygen at the bottom of Lake Simcoe at the end of summer from 1980 through to 2018. And over the last five years, the average is around 6.2 milligrams per liter. Now, if you remember at the start, I said there are our Lake Simcoe production plan target with seven milligrams per liter. We're getting very close to that. We've actually passed it on two occasions, but we're well above five and five milligrams per liter is the minimum amount required for cold water fish, but we want seven milligrams per liter to make sure they're happy and they're healthy at the bottom. So an interesting thing about Lake Simcoe is despite this variability in the phosphorus loading. So that bar graph at the top, the loads are going up and down, but the overall trend in Lake phosphorus is improving. And the trend in dissolved oxygen is also improving. So now when you're in school, taking courses in limnology or Lake science, one thing that they hammer into you is that if you increase phosphorus loading going into a lake, you're going to increase nutrients in the lake. And that winds up with lower oxygen, but Lake Simcoe seems to be defying this basic trend. So in theory for that 2017-18 year, if we had a phosphorus loading of 131 tons, this should result in a lake water concentration of 13-18. And then oxygen should be very low at the end of summer. What happened in Lake Simcoe is that phosphorus concentration stayed in the average where it was over the past few years. And oxygen also stayed quite, quite, quite good is what we wanted. So moving forward for the next few years, we need to figure out why is Lake Simcoe kind of this rogue or this renegade lake that seems to be going in its own direction and it seems to be defying this well-thought-out ecological theory that exists. So for the next few years, we'll be undertaking some studies to try and explain what's going on and what this means to our lake management plans. We've got three basic areas that we're going to be looking at. First of these is climate change and also hydrology. So how the water is getting into the lake, biological changes. So what's going on with the, with what's living in the lake and also the role that invasive species may be having. And I'm going to talk about numbers one and three forward. So the first of these is climate and hydrology. That year that we had that high load with 131 tons, that was not what we call a hydrologically normal year. Now a normal year means that we have a wet spring, the snow melts, it runs off. We have a dry summer, then we get some rain in the fall and then we have a cold wet winter. 2017-18 did not follow this pattern. We had kind of a dry spring followed by a wet summer and then we also had a dry fall with a wet winter as well. And 70 to 80% of that 131 tons came from the tributaries and these polders that was washed into the lake. So two examples of this and what really drove up these loads were two months in this year, June and February. So the two pictures that I show here, these were taken at that ghost canal in New Market just off of Bayview Parkway. The top picture shows what this, what this part of the Holland River looks like on an average day during June. But what happened was during June 2017, we had 60 millimeters of rain over five days which saturated the ground. On June 23rd at night, we had a very heavy rain storm which delivered another 60 millimeters of rain on this kind of saturated ground. So when rain falls on saturated ground, the ground's holding as much water as it can. There's no more space for it and it runs off directly into the rivers and also the streams. So this bottom picture was taken on the morning of June 24th and you can see all that water that was dumped in from the night before running across that canal and also flooding into the background. So this one storm accounted for 11% of the total phosphorus loading to the lake for that year. And in fact, we got almost 13 tons of phosphorus in just two days and a quarter of the load occurred during this one month. Likewise in February, in February, we got a lot of precipitation in the form of rain instead of snow, which is what we wanted, snow, not rain. Rain on frozen ground is the same as the entire water shed is one big paved parking lot and it runs directly off into the rivers and also the streams. So 15% of that entire load occurred in February just because it was a wet month with a lot of rainstorms and 40% of that 131 tons around 52 tons for the entire year occurred in just these two months. So that's well above our phosphorus loading objective and it's these extreme events driven by climate chains that are driving up our phosphorus loads to the lake. Another area which we're looking at are the invasive mussels and there's two species in the lake, zebra mussels, which most people are familiar with are quagga mussels, which are shown in this picture here on the right. Mussels are filter feeders, which means they remove particles from the water. And these particles often have phosphorus and there's so many mussels and they filter so much each muscle can filter about a gallon of water a day when you calculate that out by the muscle population in Lake Simcoe that can filter a volume equivalent to the lake in a little under three days. And a recent study that was published just last week actually that came out so that these quagga mussels are now the dominant controllers of phosphorus in the lower Great Lakes. So Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, the phosphorus of where it's going and how it's being circulated around the lake is being controlled by this one invasive species. Removing all this particulate matter from the water resulted in an increase in water clarity and more clear waters resulted in more aquatic plants. However, they're not just removing particulate phosphorus, they're also leaking dissolved phosphorus back out into the water. And that has implication for more aquatic plants as well. So we've done two studies on invasive mussels in Lake Simcoe. In 2009, we went out and we sampled over 700 sites on the lake. We found out what mussels were present which ones were there and where they were found. So these two maps just show the results of these two studies. So the blue color on the left show where zebra mussels were found and the darker the blue color means that there's a higher population or a higher amount of zebra mussels in that area. And the map on the right shows where they were found. So you can see that they form almost a ring in the shallow water around the lake. And that's just because there's a change in the type of bottom substrate in Lake Simcoe from kind of rock and sand to kind of this fine silt. Zebra mussels can't tolerate fine silt as filter feeders, it tends to smother you out and that's why there were not found below about 20 meters of depth. When we went back and re-did this study in 2015 there was a complete change in the population of these mussels. Zebra mussels were greatly reduced and even today if you go out on Lake Simcoe you'd be hard pressed to find one zebra mussel unless you know where to look. All the mussels that we're seeing now are these quagga mussels, these second species. Why this is significant is because I've often referred to as quagga mussels as version 2.0 of zebra mussels. They're bigger, they filter faster, they can tolerate colder water compared to zebra mussels and they're around in the lake and they can survive on this silt and sediment at the bottom of the lake. They're not limited by this 20 meter depth they go straight to the bottom of the lake and this has challenges to the lake and also to our lake management plan and how phosphorus is being cycled. As I said with that mussel filtering going on it's increased aquatic plants and we've done three lake-wide studies on aquatic plants in Lake Simcoe in 2008, 2013, 2018. These aquatic plants were found in Lake Simcoe. The darker the green color means the higher concentration of plants. The amount of aquatic plants in the lake has increased fivefold since 2008 and this increase as you can see there's a lot more dark green color in that map on the far right than the rest of the map on the far left. This increase is mostly related to one invasive species and as one invasive species it now makes up about two thirds of all the aquatic plants that we're finding in Lake Simcoe. The plant species is starry stungwort and this is where the devil is really in the details is that it's not technically a plant it's a macroalgae. If you think of macroalgae like seaweed or something that you see on the ocean seashore it's pretty much the same thing. Macroalgae don't have roots so they have kind of a hold fast where they can kind of weakly hold themselves in one place. Aquatic plants take all their nutrients from the underlying sediment the same thing as trees and grasses from the surrounding water and that type of nutrient that they're taking up is dissolved phosphorus and that's the type of nutrient that was being released from these clogged mussels. So the picture on the right here just shows what one of these invasive algae look like and then they form these dense pillows or these dense balls if you will at the bottom and that second picture here on the left at the bottom just shows kind of what they look like. So assessing health requires a holistic approach to your human for example. If you go into the doctor for a checkup he can't tell how healthy you are just by looking at one of these indicators so they often take your blood pressure and that tells you what your blood pressure is but doesn't tell you how healthy a person you are they have to look at other indicators they send you for a cholesterol test they listen to your heart rate they check your weight, your body temperature your diet or age and so on. Same thing with lakes phosphorus loads and phosphorus concentration that's only one or two indicators that we use to figure out how healthy a lake is. So in total we probably use around 350 to 400 indicators which we're looking at to try and track the health of Lake Simcoe. So in summary Lake Simcoe the overall phosphorus and oxygen concentrations in the lake haven't proved but loads did not and we need to understand why Lake Simcoe is going in this different direction from any other lake that we studied and why is there this disconnect between the lakes. We know that extreme rainfall events are driving up loads for the phosphorus loads so we probably need to study how we can hold back all this water and try and better manage the lake in that respect. Invasive species we need to understand what their role is. Lakes are complicated systems in Lake Simcoe there's probably over 10,000 different species each one of these species has countless genetic varieties they're interacting with each other they're interacting with each other in the chemical environment that they're in. We can't just change one thing we need to understand all these interactions as well and this is one reason why we need targeted monitoring to find our answers and what's going on. So that's my talk and I'll stop sharing if people have questions or you can ask them later on at the discussions. Thank you very much that was very enlightening again I mean to me we should be spending time learning about the various conditions of the lake and what the pieces are that your diagram of the lake looking like a body is really important I think that really speaks to what Vicki was talking about that it's life and so the life of that lake needs to be monitored in a lot of different ways and thank you for doing that but under present circumstances given COVID and the amount of money and pressure we're putting on the healthcare system are we neglecting some of this work that you do are you finding it harder to convince people to be able to do this work because the money has to go elsewhere? I think people are just as passionate about the lake as they have been in the past as well there's a lot of active community and citizen science groups around the lake which do a lot of great work as well so from a personal perspective I know COVID certainly impacted our monitoring program we were limited to how many people were on the boat at any one time and how much we could get out so we had to do like a reduced program so hopefully we're looking forward to when this pandemic is done we'll be back to normal capacity are you always looking for volunteers then through your work and to see if people have time to be able to help you do the studies? We can we have had some student volunteers in the past as well there's a lot of health and safety requirements too that's involved with working on the boat we had a question here from Suzanne who said her question is what type of fish is sustainable and healthy for eating in Lake Simcoe? There's lots of recreational important species so lake trout, lake white fish, lake herring the cold water fish they're all caught and consumed perch, bass or other ones as well so a ministry of environment I believe or natural resources but so the healthy fish you can pick one of those up and it'll tell you how many fish of what species you can consume per year, per week That's great so thank you very much Brian it was very interesting and I think most people will have learned something more about the lake each time I hear we seem to be adding layers to this whole sense of understanding our watershed which is our life boat as we like to say so we have time for one more speaker and then what I want to do at the end is get everybody if they want to to share their own understanding of water so just start thinking about what you might say if you want to spend some time chatting to us about what you feel about water but we have one more of our panelists here Claire Malcomson is the Executive Director of the Lake Simcoe Protection Coalition which sounds like something we all need to belong to at some level and certainly donate to if you accept donations and I'm pretty sure you do so why don't you take it away and lead us through your discussion of protecting our watershed Maryam unmuted thank you so much you're all tough acts to follow I thank you so much to all of the speakers for the wisdom that you bring and the experience that you bring thank you to the organizers for doing this in such a clever and inclusive way and I think this is filling my bucket, it's filling my heart so I hope I can keep you awake for the next 10 minutes or so so it's always a challenge to be the last speaker so I'm the Executive Director of the Rescue Lake Simcoe Coalition we started in 2003 we're a member-based organization one of our member groups is the CHIP was of Georgina Island First Nation actually just to tie it together and our big claim to fame is getting the Lake Simcoe Protection Act and plan and so I'm going to talk a little bit about citizen activism and what it's got us and where we are right now in the fight to save Lake Simcoe and and I'm going to start off by getting into what World Water Day asks us to do and I think this is your question for the end really is what does water mean to you so I spent a little bit of time reflecting on this my you don't need to think that this piece of art is nice it's done by a 5 year old but it's one of those things that pulls my heart strings so these are my two boys on the shore of Lake Simcoe in Innisfil my family has had family cottages there since 1889 and so for me the lake is really the home of my heart it's the place that I have always felt the most free I mean like a number of different people in different kinds of situations growing up with your cousins and your family taking care of whoever is children happy to be there that sort of community is where I got my start and we all care a lot about this property we steward it we have an arrangement with Ministry of Natural Resources to help protect the forest and the wetlands some of my cousins had some kind of wetland nearby identified and got the Ministry of Natural Resources to map it and to fully protect it so there are an awful lot of really incredible people who come before me in my family and one of the ways I try to give back is to carry on that legacy and protect Lake Simcoe really so for me that family history brings me to here then I have two boys that are six and seven and of course not only do I want Lake Simcoe to be healthy in the future but for all of our children and for all of the world's children I haven't ever traveled anywhere fancy but I've traveled in Africa and Central America a lot and so I have seen for sure what it takes to be a water activist and how important water is and how serious this is and how universal so again just really appreciate everything people brought so far a lot of it resonated with me so one of my children made this ridiculous picture like what do you value about Lake Simcoe and draw pictures of it this I think is supposed to be Snake Island doesn't look anything like Snake Island and there's a very happy fish so you know for me water means life it means family it's fun but it's also purpose for me it's really a life purpose and this is a picture from the cottage on Lake Simcoe and now I've talked about it enough so I'll go to my next slide this is Cook's Bay looking east so the Lake Simcoe watershed I actually was not entirely clear that this was a national screening here so the Lake Simcoe watershed as you can see here has a number of sub watersheds this is mapping done by the LSRCA I believe which Brian works for and they map the different areas that are sort of management units but also their ecological units this is actually really helpful for understanding your local area something that we're starting to work on now education and outreach in that so the Lake Simcoe watershed is just north of Toronto Barrie, Orillia there are 500,000 people almost that live in the watershed already this is the watershed goes all the way down to southeast Xbridge so there are a lot of pressures on the lake but there's also a lot of good stuff that's happening and as you can see a really strong sustainable tourism economy and of course that sustainable tourism economy relies on a healthy ecosystem and a healthy ecosystem is healthy people and all the critters and birds and insects that rely on nature as well so I'm going to tell you a little bit about our activist history so this is a very exciting event that I organized that was in 2007 at the south shore center in Barrie when I started to organize this event and design the paper sitting on people's laps this was part of our campaign to get the Lake Simcoe protection act this was motivated by people's theory that development was permitted on the shores and moon point in Oromadonte a natural shore and also at Big Bay Point a lot of the people in this audience are from Big Bay Point they did not think that permitting development in those places should happen and they were like us feeling that the lake needed stronger protections so that things like this wouldn't happen again and so we brought a whole lot of people together with environmental defense who I was working for at the time having had already a number of years volunteering on the board of the rescue lake Simcoe coalition so environmental defense Ontario nature and the rescue lake Simcoe coalition campaigned together and this is sort of our big event I found out the morning of the premier was coming there were all these cameras then the premier of the time Dalton McGuinty stands up and says if I'm re-elected I will introduce the lake Simcoe protection act and so he was re-elected and fast forward a year and many many meetings later here we are on the steps of Queens Park with the ladies of the lake the minister at the time Sarah Harmer sneaking in the background there and people from all of the organizations that we worked with but only a handful this is the very last minute of the lake Simcoe protection act really exciting the next year the lake Simcoe protection plan came into effect and the lake Simcoe protection plan as Brian said is really the watershed management tool for the lake so I just want to pause here to point out this was actually a citizen campaign this was not an initiative of the conservation authority or the government and this I think is a really important thing to recognize is that when there are people who see them with their own eyes and they say you may be telling me this thing but what I see is my lake environment worsening and worsening then people are motivated to help out and do something and I think that this was an incredible opportunity an incredible example of that happening so here's a list of some of my favorite things that we improved with the introduction of the lake Simcoe protection plan and I will just move on from there so I went off, did other things, had some children got married I decided that I would re-enter and become the rescue lake Simcoe coalition's first executive director in 2018 because the lake Simcoe protection plan was supposed to be reviewed by law the next year in 2019 and I thought someone who knows it really well and cares should be there to run the campaign to protect the plan and that's what I'm doing however it didn't happen for two years after that so it's just happened it's just happening right now actually but as soon as the government changed in Ontario the government of Ontario introduced bill 66 so this is the beginning of being an executive director was suddenly there was this terrible proposal for changing legislation that would have gutted really all the environmental pieces of policy like Oak Ridge's marine like Simcoe plan and the water act was insane and we fought back incredibly hard with thousands of people across the province it ruined the Christmas holiday completely but we won this campaign so this was the very exciting beginning for me of being an executive director for the first time shortly thereafter we started our protect our plan campaign and we decided very purposefully to do that with First Nations partners a First Nations board member at the time Becky Big Canoe from Georgina Island First Nations she had all sorts of great ideas including bringing some well-known First Nations artists Christy Belcourt and Isaac Murdoch to come to the event and paint and sign art and we sold that as well so we brought together a whole lot of people we pulled together a number of priorities for the review of the Lake Simcoe protection plan and we thought we were already for the legislative review that was going to happen that year and then we waited and we thought that's okay because we still have lots of people to reach in time to do that in so we had a really good volunteer year this is pre-pandemic we were setting up booths all over the place some funky artists in Dante Bay decided they were going to yarn bomb hearts and they gave them to us to use as props we got a thousand people to sign our petition for some basic premises about how to improve the Lake Simcoe protection plan and met thousands of people with a really heavy outreach tour the summer of 2019 we did some mapping which I'll show you a little bit about and we did some community mapping sessions as well to chart how well our green space is protected and also to get people's input about places where they value this was actually quite inspired by our first attempt at this was with a group of First Nations people led by Carrie Anne Charles from Jordan Island First Nation as the consultant on that part of the project and it was really neat to do that to start working on that piece first actually because we were able to see how bringing First Nations perspective on the landscape and what does water mean and we wanted to get that into the white Christian other dominant community in the area around Lake Simcoe so some integration there so here we are at the Lake Simcoe protection and review the spunky thing won't work anyway Lake Simcoe protection plan review is actually happening now in 2019 so I'm going to go right ahead to kind of where it began so the province of Ontario sorry the ministry that handles the Lake Simcoe protection plan is the ministry of the environment the first thing the province did really the first press release they had released about Lake Simcoe was announcing some money not a lot of money and they released this report so Jeff York the minister wasn't even there he got Andrew Cange and his local MPP to present the minister's report and I was really not happy with this report and it made me really worried because to me it was presenting a handful of facts I'm not questioning the science at all nothing against any of the scientists it's that in the lead up to the review of this significant legislation the idea was that we were going to be able to see how well we were doing against the targets and objectives of the Lake Simcoe protection plan and that was not at all done in a consistent way I've now read a lot of staff reports on the Lake Simcoe protection plan and that's echoed in a lot of those staff reports too so I think when the province did that I think municipalities maybe started to listen to us a little bit more that we had some reason to be concerned that the province wasn't taking this as seriously as we would like them to and that there was a lot at stake I'm one of the people that calls people out for using Lake Simcoe as a political pawn you can campaign on I'm going to save Lake Simcoe well if you're not actually saving Lake Simcoe then I'm a problem for you and I'm the person that is going to be saying well tell me how you're doing that they're kind of work that we do at the rescue Lake Simcoe coalition is really trying to interpret for the public what everyone is doing and what we think they should be doing or what would be appropriate and then liaising with municipalities the province did a public survey that's finished it started really just before Christmas and then they did a town hall in a science forum the town hall in the science forum there was a lot of information that was in the minister's report so the complaint remains there isn't enough information really upon which to base any changes to the Lake Simcoe protection plan so we're campaigning not to change the Lake Simcoe protection plan we're saying these were our priorities we're asking the province to leave the targets and objectives alone and focus on implementation and actually that's been echoed by a lot of municipalities as well so the review and these are some of the things that Lake Simcoe needs in order to be healthy so the first is about reducing phosphorus Brian's talked about that we are definitely out there saying development is a massive impact the only growing impact of phosphorus pollution around the lake and it remains a really big problem for Lake Simcoe we need better protected forest wetlands conservation authority to have the powers that they had before December of this last year when the government of Ontario gutted their powers on permitting which is a big problem across the province and we're hoping that the skilled negotiators at the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority can make sure that those powers are in place at Lake Simcoe because without the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority we would not be able to do that so we are hoping that we will be working on permitting applications and looking at a plan and saying this doesn't meet the plan and you have to do this that are the other thing to reduce your phosphorus load to reduce sediment runoff to the lake if they can't do that we are in serious trouble so that needs to happen and also First Nations 2008 and so speaking on behalf of the First Nations that I was in the meetings with their feeling was that they did not get what was written in the plan that they actually should have been consulted on creating some of the policies and they did not and so we have a proposal out there for how to make good on the words in the plan and not just say we're going to consult but actually do that to make a good effect stop these administer zoning orders because you don't have to apply the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan that's another insane policy change that's happened in Ontario recently engage the public in restoration and invasive species control and then of course also back to Brian's point about climate change we really need to incorporate climate change policies into the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan we have a lot of municipalities that have supported our petition our resolution to uphold the targets and policies of the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan where they refer to water quality and also to strengthen the policies that protect forests and wetlands in the watershed Brian showed you this chart I think I will show you this chart and then one more and then I'm going to stop talking I think we need to go on so this represents some research that we did in 2019 looking at how well protected our natural features are so what this map shows us is that 21% of the watershed is in what we're calling the best level of policy protection so those are significant forests that are mapped and identified and labeled and protected by the products they are also provincially significant wetlands same thing a lot of it's down here because the Oak Ridge's Moraine has really strong forest protection policies they're core protected areas but ironically you know it's right here where through the green belt this is actually this whole east side of the Lake Simcoe watershed is in the green belt too there's a proposal to put a highway through the green belt and through some of this highly protected land so just to point out that even the land that's in the best protected category is not necessarily permanently protected so we wanted to map it like this to make the case that unless we actually develop a natural heritage system that is protected and that is permanent it's a death by a thousand cuts and we are going to lose our natural heritage little bit by little bit but that's the efforts so we really need to step it up on a policy level here in order to meet the natural heritage cover targets of the lakes and co-protection plan which are all about the lakes health the same map we did in Simcoe County and there only 14% of the county is in that best protected category my final slide is so 2018 honestly it's been like playing whack-a-mole at Lake Simcoe there is I mean there's a new resort Marina proposed just down shore for me in Innisfil I just got in a meeting about that last week there are really a lot of pressures on Lake Simcoe right now and there are far too many issues I don't even work full time our organization has one full time staff equivalent three women that all work part time so those of us who are working on this we're like this is nuts we cannot keep up we can't help all the groups that are reaching out to us and saying what do we do there's a new proposal for development so we're trying to make the case that Lake Simcoe is really under pressure in 2018-2021 because of the Lake Simcoe protection plan review there's more but here's just a list of things that I'm not going to go into all of them but this is the list of issues that we're most concerned about in Lake Simcoe right now I'm happy to answer questions if people want here's maps of Bradford Bradford bypass I'm not going to go into it because we don't have enough time but what I wanted to leave you with here is we're a coalition we are a strength in numbers so please go to our website rescuelakesimcoe.org and while you're there you can go to the take action page and you can sign up for our e-newsletter I only send out e-newsletters about once a month really at the most unless we're in a major, major campaign and we really try to keep people up to date about what's happening and then finally we have a petition right here that's on our friends website Simcoe County Greenbelt Coalition that has to do with the last slide which was all the things that are happening on Lake Simcoe I'm going to leave it there thank you so much for sticking around and for all of you for your devotion to the good things in life it all makes a difference and I thank you for that thank you Claire on behalf of the group here on behalf of Simcoe County Kairos wow I mean this is something that I I'm a political scientist but I'm mostly a political philosopher it's hard to philosophize about lakes except to wax eloquent about their beauty and all this wonderful interaction we have with it but in this case I think it's important to be political about this and so it's really nice how the arc of the evening has gone from the politics of First Nations and the politics of bringing together various diverse communities to be able to talk about very very important resources right in front of us and we take for granted and then end with through like weave it through as a beautiful rendition of how the Bible talks about water and show how science fits it all fits together but at the end of the day we really do have to be more political about all of this and so I think questions I have for you if you don't mind is I work at a university and universities are supposed to be serving the communities that they're sitting around and so Lakehead University has a campus right on the right in Aurelia close enough to the water certainly inside the watershed and certainly inside the protected areas of Central County York University is not that far away Trent's not that far away but also universities are all involved in the research and Brian this is for you too doing research and connecting their students and programming to this area I can start with that I mean I was a part-time teacher at Georgian College in 2008 and 2009 that was the time that I had the most amazing connection with students because I was their teacher and they're like okay we're gonna stick with you right but I have gone into schools I have spent a lot of time trying to engage students through their teachers and by showing up and offering here's something you can study you can study this for credit it doesn't work I'm sorry maybe I'm the wrong person but I'm a bit surprised at how unsuccessful I've been at that and I got to say like I think it is about relationships but also I don't know I volunteered so much time to this kind of cause before I got a job I mean I was really surprised that students did not volunteer more I have had really good luck with hiring interns and so with a bit of money that's a different story and I've had really good luck with that I'm open to ideas I wish it was better but clues as to why it's not so I apologize for not mentioning George and of course George is a huge player in all of this as well so Brian do you have anything to offer with that question I mean you can just say no if you want we have an education department that does kind of student classroom activities that sort of thing about nature and lake sumco and so on at the post secondary level George college there's a science that has done some work on the lake Trent University is one of our big partners as well speaking tomorrow at the University of Toronto in Scarborough for example with some researchers there at the University of Toronto so there's lots of universities that work on the lake as well my main role is from a lake stewardship and management aspect so they can answer the questions that I really don't have the technology or the time to answer as well so they can delve into what can control a zebra mussel or what their life requirements are sort of thing that we just don't have time to do right so it really does take a coalition of people, science and working with First Nations as well and all around it is this sort of spiritual essence of the lake which is what we are we're connected to all the water so I thank all of you for your contribution tonight and what we wanted to do at the end was just kind of go around the room so to speak so Claire if you could stop sharing we'll go back to this is a method that I've used before I don't know if you want to use it again you can try what I would do is talk about my impression of the water and what water means to me and then I would pick someone else and then they would say something and then they would pick someone else and until we get hopefully through the entire group we have about half an hour if you want to do that if you don't you can just listen as well so I'm just going to start I have very similar memories of water that Claire talked about I grew up every summer at a cottage north of Montreal that cottage is no longer in our family for political reasons and economic reasons more than anything but it is my fondest memories of water come from that and from that experience of being in and around the water and protecting everything around our property the same way that you did we were very much conscious in a very early age of the importance of environmentalism but also of taking the time to clean up things to make sure that we didn't dump things in the water and so up until the last moment of her life my mum was at the cottage and she died there at the cottage so her spirit is always going to be at that lake no matter whether or not we own it or not it's always going to be there so I've always had this spiritual connection with the lake into water everywhere I go there's water I think it was George who said we have more water in Canada than any other place in the world so we need to take care of it a lot more so I'm going to stop there and I'm going to give it over to my good friend Elaine Elaine Garrell what do you think thank you Doug I grew up in Northern Saskatchewan that was a religious experience for me going camping and being by the water it's marked me as so many people have spoken about the link between growing up and being by the water it was that for me as well and I will call on on Becky I don't think I have anything to add Tom thank you Becky I want to talk about what I want to thank the four speakers it was an excellent program tonight I congratulate the people that organized this it was really first rate I want to talk about the hidden nature of water and what I mean by that is that I'd like to help people increase their consciousness of watersheds the Elaine had the wonderful we had the wonderful maps by Claire of the watershed the Lake Simcoe watershed and it's bigger than Lake Simcoe and I think people have a problem with this because they think it's just Lake Simcoe but it's not it's the entire watershed and I just love maps and frankly we don't the consciousness of the watersheds not in our heads the way road maps are any other kind of maps but I think this is what we have to develop as a consciousness of the watershed that we're in and I'd love to see maps such as that I saw that Claire produced in many public places like public libraries and municipal offices etc. we need to have our consciousness raised about the watershed that we're living in and I don't think it would take that much well Doug you're a political scientist maybe I see it very politically I see watersheds is a very political issue but if you you've got to frame it in that sort of way because until we do have that consciousness the Ford the Ford type of governments in this country are going to ride rough shot offers all the time all the time all the time because people haven't got it in their heads they were part of a watershed anyway that's all I want to say about that but thank you very much for this wonderful evening so now pass it somewhere else oh I'll pass it on to Dave Gordon as Thomas saying the watershed it goes back to our first people because that redefined the territorial because of the transportation networks of where they survived and thrived so it has a historic as well as a geological meeting and like for us you know we might be on the marine but we have to think of which way on that ridge line the water flows and that's what connects us I would like to invite Suzanne thank you for all the learning tonight and I just feel enriched by all the different presentations and water for me much has already been said from Elaine and other people and visit Tom the host growing up around water we have a family cottage that's still in the family and swimming I mean we drink water we swim in water we look at water I live near camp in Felt Bay and I walk there as much as I can I love it but it feels like it's always there it feels like it's a perpetual thing but I know not to take it for granted it's sacred to me it's important we drink it we live it our bodies are water I think kids are learning about the water cycle too in the science of it but as was it Tom who said maybe we need more education around us to remind us all the time about the value of water so thank you for that and I'll pass it to I have to see who else is the names all here I can't see all the names sorry just pass it to Muriel is Muriel there or Valerie I'm there I'm here just basically thank you very much for the four different perspectives on water I really found that broaden my whole perspective all of them so informative and so helpful basically that's what I want to say thank you very much and the whole watershed I do a lot of hiking the whole watershed is always a conversation because I hike a lot on the Oak Ridge Marine so I was with a friend about a month ago when we were on snowshoes and one of the highest points and figuring out okay exactly what point on this marine does the water flow south to the Humber system and north to the Holland and then of course we went home and looked at our maps and I think both of us came up with the conclusion these they're vast numbers of tributaries and rivers that we weren't aware of until we walked there and then also looked at the maps so that's just from perspective recently but thank you again I just found it extremely informative and the whole and the one that I the indigenous perspective and the Christian perspective to weave that into the others was valuable to me thank you so Muriel you pick someone now and someone's actually requested Vicky to speak to I don't know if you want to ask Vicky Vicky Meegwetch Muriel Meegwetch everybody who's spoken already this evening and Meegwetch to the wonderful speakers Meegwetch Doug for this for moderating so eloquently I guess what I want to say about water is that when I was a kid I'm not going to give you my whole life story so we're not going there but when I was a kid I used to jump off the Indian Maiden like right off the top right off the cabin and we used to actually have we used to we weren't allowed to do it and sometimes they would send the police down when they would see all the little Nishnabe kids jumping off the cabin of the Indian Maiden but and I would jump down and I think it was about maybe maybe 10 to 14 feet of water depending on what year it was the water would rise and fall and anyways I would hit the water and then I would just sink right down to the bottom and I would hit the ground underneath the water and then I would come back up and I really think that that kind of fearlessness is what we need for water today we need to be able to take risks we need to be able to get out of our comfort zones we need to be able to have that youthful attitude towards water and to push ourselves to do things that we wouldn't normally do and as a child I was fearless and I could do those kinds of things now I would think twice about jumping off the Indian Maiden but you know my kids have done it a couple of times and been caught by police but that is the best memory and I think growing up on this thing every kid every kid did it so I'm going to leave it there Brian why don't you share your personal story maybe you've talked about a science perspective but maybe what do you think of it like when you're out there do you connect with the water you must yeah absolutely I think the more you know about water the more you appreciate it I grew up on east coast so I grew up around water both the ocean at family that had cottages on lakes and so on so I grew up kind of turning over rocks looking at different things and then you get into high school and university and you can actually have a career doing something you find is fun kind of things and the more you learn about water the more you learn how magical it is like the angle of the atom is determined the properties of water what it can and can't do and it's one of the only substances that its highest density is at 4 degrees celsius so it's solid state is less dense than it is at a liquid state so I mean it's just fascinating and we're spending billions of dollars to try and figure out if there was water on Mars right now and you know I think sometimes I think well why couldn't we spend those billions of dollars protecting the water that we have here because I don't plan to go to Mars anytime soon you know what I mean I think we really have our priorities mixed up and in some ways leaving the Earth is problematic to me why we want to leave this beautiful planet it's incredible and anyway that's another story thank you Brian did you want to pick someone else too no I'll let you know the crowd yours well I don't know the crowd Sonya hasn't said anything and I know Sonya can say something so how about you Sonya there okay thank you again so much for this evening it was just wonderful and I only wish I'd had this information last week because I had been asked to prepare a sermon for two different churches this past Sunday and focusing on today being water day so that sent me scurrying in a number of different directions and thanks to Elaine and also to George I spoke with both or was in touch with both of them but for me water has always been a sacred place it's where I feel the closest to God and in my research last week there was a meditation that actually appeared March the 15th so that would have been probably Monday or Tuesday last week and it was from a meditation called Lutherans Connect and this Sherri Coleman writes it and what she had said and you know I'll just always remember this for me it was very powerful water is the connective essence so the solar spirit of all of creation and I just thought wow that says it just in a few short words so water is very important to me and the care of it and being able to take part on the water and to remember always that the physical and spiritual part of water are always intertwined you can't separate them so thank you. Thank you thank you Sonia George how about you you must have something more personal George grew up in a place called smooth Rock Falls have you ever been to anyone have been to smooth Rock Falls it just sounds wonderful doesn't it it sounds like a Stephen King you know kind of what's the that one stand by me kind of place where people grew up with with other kids and stuff how was that George you're muted right now too Millock is a was a paper town there isn't a mill anymore the town is still there on the Machogamy River north of St. Louis and below the dam or huge sturgeon just gigantic fish down there it was quite something but now I live just one street back from Kemp and Felt Bay we can see the bay from our windows here there's one street between us and the bay we swim in it we canoe on it this winter we walked on it and this summer we're going to start sailing on it it's just magic incredible indescribable medium for recharging my spiritual batteries or calming me down when I need that but it seems to me that people can't protect or appreciate or love or feel connected to something that they haven't experienced I think we need to have some kind of encounter session for our youth bring them to the water help them to experience what it's like to be around the water up around sturgeon falls one summer I was laying on the rocks after nightfall and little tiny waves were coming up on the shore and there were all pebbles along the shore and the water was chuckling among the pebbles last summer we had a family gathering distanced and we went to a long distance we went to pancake bay and along the water there you see pebbles are the most phenomenal colors but you only see the colors when they're in the water when you take them out and you dry them they just get dull so the water reveals something there that the air can't so I think there's a lot of ways to experience water so they can treasure it more thanks George that's wonderful who else is out there Matt Stevens are you going to say something Matt can I say something oh of course Rainer yeah go ahead yeah is Matt still there this is me so Matt why don't you go and then Rainer right after now the week after we're back and in the past we've seen a lot of stories about dangerous things how they're and how we've never seen a lot of stories about dangerous things really greetings my relatives my name is Little Thunder of the Bear Clan I also said to you that, I said to you the true name of this place that we're talking about, Moesia Zagaga, and in Junkazo. It's the shining lake, long before Lord Simcoe decided to name that lake after himself. It's for 10,000 plus years that we know of that we've lived on this place. We've called this place the Sacred Lake Home. And I was even looking at the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan and it's kind of a double-edged sword. It's just for 200 years human influences, human activities that have influenced the Lake Simcoe watershed, if you will. In a way, there's two meanings behind that. It still denotes that notion that there was nothing here before colonialism showed up. And it also acknowledges the severe impact that that's had. It's very misleading because if you go to the top end of this lake, Jikunengoma to that water fence, that predates the pyramids in Egypt. So for you to say that there's human activities have only influenced Lake Simcoe for the last 200 years. It's a half-true and it only impacts on one aspect of what that is. You see, the difference is the Nishinaabe, Nishinaabe adzuin, the Nishinaabe way, we have a responsibility to bobble madzuin, to life, to promote good life. So we as human beings are only one small piece of this puzzle. And so our actions of our ancestors, we never left that impact that we as humans now seem to leave everywhere, myself included. The life that I live now, I have to jump in my car and drive to my place of employment and what does that do to the air? What does the Tim Hortons cups that I throw in the garbage, what does that do to our quay? What does it do to the earth? I have a toilet the same as you. We actively defecate into that which gives us life. And I think there was a speaker who said it earlier, why are we investing all this money to go look to Mars for water? Well, the key to that is because whether people want to consciously admit it or not, we understand that water is life. So that in the pursuit of looking for life in the cosmos, that is what they're looking for is water. And so it's encouraging to me to listen to this talk, to see the different perspectives and to know that there's people out there that care. The question that I ask is where is this coming from? We as human beings, we seem to forget our responsibility as caretakers as stewards of life. We seem to still be approaching everything from our human perspective, whether that's a need to protect our places of leisure, whether that's the government's need to protect its policy and its economic machine, if you will. It always comes from a human perspective. No one really is taking into account that which does not exist anymore. On Dilma Oga, where are all those pickerel? Where are those lake trout? We listen to the elders. I can tell you that I'm no scientist, so I'm not going to be able to tell you scientifically what's happening, but I could tell you the difference. I'm 35 years old, so I can tell you what Lake Simcoe looks like now compared to when I was a little boy. I can tell you that we can't go swimming anymore because we're dealing with what is that, swimmer's itch. I can tell you what the fish look like when I pull them up out of the water. I can tell you what the sport fishermen dwell on that term for a second, what they do to the lake and the garbage that they leave everywhere. I totally agree with what some of the speakers said earlier is that we need to raise the political pressure, if you will. We need to, one of my colleagues at work, you know, it's important to create this critical mass, so we all have to come together and work to protect that which gives us light. Whatever our viewpoints, whatever our faiths, whatever wherever we're coming at, even if we are coming at it from somewhat of a selfish human needs, if you will. The point is, is we still have to do this work together. You know, we as Nishinaabe people, you know, your cottages, your cottagers were laid, the foundation for those cottages were laid after we were displaced from our territory, after we were unable to do our job as stewards of this land. You know, it was only in like that Lake Simcoe Protection Plan says, you know, the last 200 years things have been decimated. Like, if you understood the spirit of this lake, if you understood what this really meant, if you understood what this actually did for all of our common history, you know, we won't even worry about the ancient and Nishinaabe, we'll worry about the founding of this state, you know, we'll worry about the last few hundred years. Where do you determine the wealth needed to build a country? Where did it come from? Where did the timber come from? It came from Southern Ontario. Where did the water that was used for the ice boxes all over North America, you know, it came directly from Lake Simcoe. Commercial fishing, commercial fishing boats were everywhere in the early 20th century, harvesting up that, that pickerel, 1000, tens of thousands of pounds being shipped out. So we as human beings are like a machine, you know, the, the imperial way is to come in and claim ownership of something, bend it to your will, use the resources as you see fit, and there's never any, there's never any empathy, if you will, for anything else. You know, we don't, and that's where we're coming from. As Nishinaabe people, I can tell you that it's hardwired into us, it's hardwired into our spirit, that that's what cripples us is because my spirit still remembers the cranberry marsh, it still remembers the wild rice, it still remembers the water fence, it still remembers the sacred places around this lake. And when I said that, and I introduced myself, what I said is forever, you know, dwell on that term for a second, but our grandparents are literally buried everywhere, you know, our great chief is buried under a sidewalk in Aurelia, that here on village is being, you know, torn up for the go train. So once again, we as humans need to reevaluate like how we're going, how what we're really doing, you know, why are we protecting water? We're protecting it now because it's become threatening to us. We're not protecting water out of a place of compassion for the all life that, that requires that, you know, so I don't know, it's, I'm willing to help in whatever ways you want. You know, I can help build awareness through my job and through my work. But once again, I agree with some of what was said, you know, it falls on deaf ears. I know, I know what happens when I go to site 41. I know what happens when I get pushed off of my own territory for recreational purposes, right? So I apologize if some of this seems harsh or rough, but that's the simple reality of what we face, you know, our, our lake is under threat, and it continues to be. And there's no people aren't the development isn't stopping in York region isn't stopping in simple region. The subdivisions are going up all over the place, you know, so you know, so what's going to end up happening? I don't know. So I hope we can figure this out. Thank you, Matt. It's 8.59. Reiner, did you want to say something? Very briefly, I came to Canada in 1965, 10 years later, we went to tiny township and looked around Georgia, Southern Georgia Bay, and we liked what we saw, including the beautiful sunsets. So in 74, we had built a house up on a hill overlooking Georgia Bay, and we lived there for 30 years. And we planted a few thousand trees in the process, because we were living on sand, on general and soft Georgia Bay sand. But as far as water is concerned, I would like to congratulate Vicky Monag about their efforts with site 41. I was there at the time. And we too had a sign on front of our house or down the road saying protect our water. And we were on a water well, a build well, 85 feet down. And it was the best water that you could ever imagine. And now that we live in Barry, we miss that good water very much. Thank you for a beautiful evening. Thank you, everyone. The Zoom gods are going to start shutting us down soon enough. So let's say thank you. I appreciate everybody that was here tonight. I now know more people than I did before this evening started. So thank you again to all our speakers, and keep doing the wonderful work that you do.