Yesterday I had gone for a bike trek to explore what my community had to offer. I found a paved bike trail just along the Thames North branch that crosses Highbury Rd. at one point. There were a lot of felled trees and brush covering the pathway but it is still fairly early. The common sight along all of the rivers and creeks and pathways was litter. There's nothing that can mar a beautiful bit of scenery than random litter strewn about. I had a notion to go collect it that afternoon.
Today I had a spark of Sunday morning energy after a nice big breakfast with my pal Scott. I thought, "I'm gonna go give a gift to my community and clean up along the stream behind our house!" So with glad bags, gloves and a couple of sticks and tools for fishing stuff from the creek, I set off to make my neighbourhood a nicer place for the spring.
I was kind of also doing it for the ducks. I like ducks.
When I woke up this morning I already knew I wanted to commit some time to helping out my duck friends. I can hear them through my bedroom window in the morning and it always makes me smile. I really like this neighbourhood, with a large selection of birds and critters that live near the creek, it's always nice to walk around. The neighbourhood to the north of, not quite so nice though. Probably why the clean up is needed in the first place.
One couple who seem to walk the paths a lot stopped to tell me thanks and that there was some broken glass I should watch out for. The wife told me that I was going to leave them nothing to do for the community walk next Saturday. I told her I'd be sure to leave something for them and she smiled and walked on. As her husband walked by after kicking a lot of the glass aside, he told me "You're doing a very good job!" and smiled.
At one point a 14 year old boy walked up to me with something to drop into my garbage bag. He was a clean cut looking kid in a London Knights shirt who offered that if he had gloves he would help me. I thanked him and said if I had extra gloves I'd love the help, but thanks just the same.
A little while later after acquiring a third bag to fill and a mini broom and dust pan for the glass, an 8 year old girl and two friends stopped and looked at me and said "Thank you for cleaning up that glass and making us safe. We don't like to step on it. That's very nice of you to make us safe like that." I grinned pretty wide for the next 15 minutes or so.
As I was finishing up the 3rd bag, I was feeling pretty drained after about 2 hours walking up and down the ravine. A young father with 2 boys stopped and commended my job and to tell me he was thinking of getting his hip waders on to clean out the creek even more. It's nice to see that people stop and take an interest when they see another person doing something about it.
SO here's the best part, the list of what I found among the reeds and trees and along the side of the bridge, not for the faint of heart:
- Bag of Arabic labelled cassette tapes and Arabic written books and pamphlets. I am pretty sure I found a copy of the Koran in there!
- 40 odd bread bags – Hey folks, please don't feed the ducks bread. It's not good for them! If you really must feed them your bread heels, please take the bread bag with you! Seriously, folks even tie the bags to the bridge railing!!
- 100 odd coffee cups and lids, the bulk of which were from Tim Horton's and Macs (just around the corner).
- 40-50 odd water bottles, pop bottles and cans.
- 2 used diapers.
- 2 Always pads (I know they're Always because they were "The Ones with Wings!")
- A used pregnancy tester wand (it was blue)
- 25-30 filled doggy poop bags (many that had the pretty little paw prints on them) – Hey jerks, if you're aware enough to buy fancy bags to scoop your dog's shit, then be cool enough to take the damned things home and not toss them along the creek banks! OK?
- A rusted Bic razor.
- 2 or 3 bottles worth of broken glass
- 120 plus candy wrappers, gum packaging, chip bags etc.
- 2 random winter gloves. One on land, one in the creek
- Half of an old CRT monitor casing.
- A large sheet of Styrofoam
- Various flyer and newspaper pages.
- Empty Sawmill Creek tetra wine carton.
Funny enough I didn't see a single condom, used or otherwise. Yer welcome community walk people! ;-)
In relation to your blog post (since I'm here, right?), kudos for the cleanup effort. :)
ReplyDeleteHighbury Avenue, surely!
ReplyDeletePretty Close Butch. Actually it's the stream between Huron and Kipps that crosses Barker.
ReplyDeleteSo you're saying that there is a "Highbury Road" in London?
ReplyDeleteI hadn't noticed my error. Yes I meant Highbury Ave.
ReplyDelete