It was a very productive few hours spent cleaning up along the North Bay waterfront for Joanne Weiler.
She volunteered her time to help with Saturday’s city-wide cleanup blitz, and there was no shortage of discarded items.
“I found lots of plastic, cigarette butts, Styrofoam containers coming in off the lake from the thaw, car parts, a baby soother, tennis balls. It has been an interesting day,” laughed Weiler.
“That’s the negative side of it. The positive side is how many people turned out to help, and it seems to be a growing movement in the city to clean it up. So, I’ll take the positive side of it and hope when people see other people cleaning up, they won’t litter in the first place.”
Grant Sutherland was one of those volunteers focused on keeping the city clean and pleasing to the eye.
“It is such a beautiful area down here. If you’re going to be a citizen of North Bay, you should do something to help out, so that is why I came down,” said Sutherland.
“Everybody should pitch in a little bit to do something to make your city beautiful.”
With her hands full of garbage, Julie Blanchette makes another trip to fill her garbage bag.
“I’m finding this is a wonderful community with plenty of volunteers. Everybody appreciates our waterfront and they’re willing to work to maintain it,” said Blanchette.
“This is the first time that my friend and I have done this, and I will be back. I’m going to clean up every time I’m down here now. I will bring a bag and carry this on as a routine.”
Among the volunteers was this year’s president of the Nipissing University Student Union.
As a local citizen, born and raised, Hannah Mackie has been going to the waterfront as long as she can remember, and this was her way of giving back.
“A passion of mine is the environment, I started the environmental group at the university. So, something I’m hoping to do in my lifetime is take my degree in business and partner that with helping people move toward more sustainable practices,” explained Mackie.
“This is such a beautiful space, students come down here and use the space all the time. I think it is important for students to come into the community and give back and keep the space beautiful for us to use.”
Joining Mackie was one of the student union vice-president’s, Tayler Sullivan.
She found the experience rewarding, noting that many students are environmentally aware, and make a conscious effort to try and keep the university grounds litter free.
“I know some of the students who go hiking on the trails, and they’ll come back and bring some garbage with them. I find students at Nipissing, because our campus is on such a beautiful landscape, are focused on keeping it as beautiful as possible.”
The city-wide cleanup blitz was organized by the Heritage Gardeners.
Spokesperson Hariett Madigan was more than pleased by the volunteer turnout.
“It was phenomenal. We were expecting about 75, but I’m sure we had about 125 people out. They were either here to clean out their gardens, or they wanted to help with the shoreline cleanup,” said Madigan.
“The response has been so great it is overwhelming and it shows they just need a vehicle to participate. So Clean Green Beautiful North Bay is the vehicle we hope over the next several years, we will make our city the most beautiful community in Northern Ontario.”
The goal is to make the city litter-free by the fall.
“The concept came from the Heritage Gardeners, that if we can create stewardship and beauty here at the waterfront, why can’t we do it through the whole community?” questioned Madigan.
“A lot of the initiatives that happened in the city, came from the heritage gardeners. That has been the first step.”
The next city-wide blitz will be held in July, followed up with another one in September.
“This year the focus is litter free. Next year we’re going litter free, green and beautiful and we’ll be helping people with all kinds of things to make that happen.”
