Editor,
My attempt at humour in the Sept 15th issue seems to have riled one of your readers re: bears pooping in the woods and the comparison to thousands of grass cattle being pastured on the Bruce every summer without the use of facilities.
Dismissiveness and parody are part of humour – or attempts thereof. Everyone knows human excrement on the ground is a not good thing. No one is saying that cattle manure is necessarily benign but it is interesting to note that hundreds of tons of the stuff are dumped over the Peninsula every year without a word of complaint. Satire is a way of bringing problems to the fore without constant repetitive moaning sessions. As my grandmother once said, “Sometimes you have to laugh or you’ll cry.”
The reader was 100% correct to state that there is no easy solution to public defecation. It is a worldwide problem – not just something to observe in our little self-centered community. And it is not a new problem. 20 years ago I was removing my wet suit in the small wood at the Big Tub light house when I stood on a pile of the “good stuff”. In stepping back I tromped on a fresh sampling. Sure made the trip home a chore when my kids wanted me to ride on the roof.
In any wooded intercity park in much of Europe the ground is covered with excrement and worse, in Paris, I have seen that patrons often leave tissue. So its snow in July everywhere you look. San Francisco has many employees cleaning the sidewalks every morning. So do many large cities. The tent cities in Toronto add needles to the piles. I have read that in Great Britain they often leave underwear – so maybe we are getting off easy so far?
Our tourists park along the roadside for miles and then walk. Without putting a Johnny every 100 feet (wouldn’t that provide a unique Bruce landscape?) what are they to do when nature calls? Even worse restaurants say facilities are only for customers.
In the same vein I note some Councillors fighting against the idea of opening up more parkland and/or municipal land to the public. Essentially, the accessible areas haven’t changed in 30 years while the Ontario population has skyrocketed. This is wrong. People don’t deserve to be crowded like cattle along the roadside, forced to defecate and/or barbeque in the ditch. They may be lowly Tourists, as seems to be their implied description in local publications, but they are people. (We just paid some 22 million dollars for another 3,000 acres of new parkland and the gates are essentially closed on all of it – what’s wrong with this picture?)
Moving on, I find a dichotomy in reading this fine newspaper. Many articles are on guaranteed annual income and helping your fellow man type of thing. Noble and high sounding indeed. Alas I also find many articles on the darn tourists crowding us good folks and making life miserable for two whole months of the year. Attempts at establishing essentially a “gated community” by controlling access to the chosen few were thwarted by the MTO and the Provincial Government who mandated the Canadian ideal of equal access for all. Just a point to ponder.
Regards,
Kevin Doyle
Dorcas Bay
