Cleaning Up Montreal Shorelines

Written by Johanna Donovan, Writer/Editor, Our Canada Magazine
Originally published on the Reader’s Digest website.
Last weekend I participated in The Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, featured in the September issue of More of Our Canada.
Lately I’ve been more and more concerned about the environment as I follow several organizations online and read more about what we’re doing to our planet. So I was happy to make a small change by cleaning up a little bit of my city.

My mother and I arrived in Verdun at 9:30 a.m. and were paired with two other volunteers. The 1 kilometre of shoreline we were to clean was divided into four sections with the last two being the most difficult terrain – steep inclines, lots of trees and rocks. We chose section four and after a brief speech from the organizer and a representative from the WWF, we headed off, picking up garbage along the way – turns out benches in parks are a magnet for cigarette butts!
It was a windy day but we warmed up quickly as we walked along the foresty path and scrambled down to the water. I was amazed at how many bits of glass we found, a few iron rods of some sort, ropes, plenty of plastic bottles and caps and many bricks. We had to leave the bricks as they would have broken our garbage and recycling bags! I did find one tire but it was so submerged in the mud and dirt I couldn’t dig it out, even with the help of one of those metal rods. At the end of our section we found tons of nails and bits of broken glass around a fire pit area, as well as fishing line, not to mention all the cigarette butts.

In all, some 59 participants filled almost 30 bags with 160.5 kilos of garbage, including approximately 1,000 cigarette butts, and recycling. I could have kept going but the families with kids were probably grateful for the free lunch and the many prizes awarded to those who collected the most weight, the most cigarette butts and those with the right raffle tickets!
After our cleanup, my mom and I headed to a hip hop festival in our neighbourhood. We both felt the need to put our gloves back on and start picking up the thousands of cigarette butts in the park!
Find a cleanup near you and send in a photo to Our Canada!