The beachcombers

Writer Janice Weaver joins thousands of other hardy souls from all walks of life to participate in the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup

by Janice Weaver

On a warm and beautiful Saturday last September, I, along with a dozen or so members of my community sailing club, gathered at our clubhouse on Centre Island, in downtown Toronto, snapped on our surgical gloves and waded into the waters of Lake Ontario in search of trash. Several more volunteer trash collectors, who had chosen to tackle two small beaches that face the city skyline, joined our group. After much discussion over the previous two years, we had decided to participate, at last, in the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup.

I had approached the day with some trepidation. I believed that the land our sailing club occupied was neat and well kept, and I was certain there would be little to no garbage for us to collect. I had visions of myself posing awkwardly around a tiny pile of trash with my fellow cleaners, every last one of us looking sheepish at having done so little to save the planet from ruin.

One hour of cleanup, I thought, a few quick photos, and the day would be over.

The Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup is a grassroots initiative in the truest sense of the word. In 1994, four employees of the Vancouver Aquarium decided to take part in what was at the time a new initiative called the International Coastal Cleanup (ICC), run by the United States-based Ocean Conservancy. One day in early fall, the group headed out to a Coal Harbour beach and spent some two hours ridding a kilometre-long strip of shoreline of discarded cigarette butts and coffee cups. None of the four harboured any intention of turning their efforts into a nationwide program. But they did receive enthusiastic responses from people who heard about the cleanup, and soon other Vancouverites were volunteering to clean sites of their own.

For the first few years, the event remained a modest one, attended mostly by friends and colleagues of the original cleanup crew. But between 1998 and 2001, other communities in British Columbia and Alberta began to tidy up their own shorelines. In 2002, the Vancouver Aquarium was able to expand the cleanup across Canada, thanks largely to the TD Bank Financial Group, which supports the campaign through its TD Canada Trust Friends of the Environment Foundation. Today, the aquarium retains five full-time and two contract employees who work exclusively on the shoreline cleanup program.

Over the past few years, the number of volunteers has grown astonishingly. In 2006, more than 30,000 Canadians cleaned up nearly a thousand sites across the country; in Ontario alone, 6,799 participants tackled 273 sites, cleaning an impressive 570 kilometres of shoreline. Those first four volunteers with their few bags of trash unwittingly set in motion a movement that has turned ordinary Canadians into stewards of their local lakes and rivers.

But the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup is not just about “prettifying” our waterways, and participants do more than cart away garbage. They also record the types of items they find. Cleanup program staff send every site coordinator in the country a package that includes several data-collection cards. As participants gather trash, they note on the cards what they have found. At the end of the day, coordinators compile the results on a summary sheet, which is returned to the Vancouver Aquarium. The aquarium then passes that information on to the ICC, where it is combined with the results of more than 90 other participating nations. (Canada is the second-largest contributor to the ICC, behind the United States.)

This kind of information reveals the major causes of shoreline litter. Fully 80 percent of the waste along Canada’s waterways is the result of recreational activities – like picnics on the beach, say – and using the shore as a trash can for cigarette butts.

It was the idea of doing something hands-on to improve the environment that appealed to most of us who came out to the cleanup. Our backgrounds were interestingly varied. “I’d wanted to help with something like this for a long time,” said Susan Higgins, a customer support director for a software company. “I live along the lake in the west end, and I always see ducks and geese swimming by and through m garbage. I wanted to do something to try to prevent that.” Lisa Philpott, a project manager for an IT company, said she wanted to do her part to clean up an area she spends a lot of time in during the summer. “I hope that by taking part, I’ll also bring the problem to the attention of my friends and family.”

Ours was a drop-in cleanup, meaning that it was open to anyone who wanted to join us. Of the 20 or so people who turned up, half a dozen heard of our group through the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup website and contacted our volunteer site coordinator, Liz McGroarty.

On cleanup day, we organized ourselves into teams of four or five, and loaded up with bottled water and extra garbage bags from the clubhouse. After McGroarty, a nurse, delivered a quick lecture on the importance of safely handling any discarded needles we might come across, we headed out to the beach.

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