Dear Sir:
Whenever I’m not employed in my trade as an ironworker, I do a lot of walking around my neighbourhood of Lakelse Lake and Furlong Bay Park, trying to do at least 12 kilometres per day with my little dog, Maverick, who is in great shape, by the way.
On my walks I’ve noticed how much garbage there is in ditches and on the roadways.
It’s very disturbing and on one of my walks I decided that it was all very ugly and went further to seek help in trying to, at the very least, clean up my neighbourhood before the leaves grew and covered it all.
I then contacted Murray Hamer of he 747 Air Cadets and asked him if I could ask the cadets to give me a hand in cleaning up old Lakelse Lake Road from Hwy37 South down to the lake and all roads connected – Kroyer, Kresten, First Ave., Adel, Bruce and McBride.
He said that was a good idea. I also told him that we could combine a bottle and can drive at the same time so that at least the cadets could see some monetary reward come their way for their efforts.
He was very happy with that and told me to contact Captain David Ross to see how many cadets would be interested in helping me.
On Sunday, April 10 at 10 a.m., 15 cadets showed up at my place at the lake along with four adults who were willing to help.
After a little pep talk of do’s and don’ts I gave each cadet a pair of gloves and two big garbage bags each and we headed out to do the collection.
These eager youngsters went to work and did an amazing job, which was noticed by all who donated and helped out in carrying out my quest.
After three hours we stopped collecting, the neighbourhood had donated $500.60 in bottles, cans and donations which took my wife Becky and I several days to sort with volunteers helping with sorting on that Sunday.
The garbage collected was quite disconcerting. There was a hot water tank, a broken up TV, real estate sign holders, discarded window frames, running boards, ATV and four-wheel parts, a kitchen sink, a broken wire rope choker, various types of metal, a broken stereo.
We also filled a donated Geir dumpster full to capacity with plastic and garbage.
To our amazement, we stopped counting at more than 300 coffee cups with plastic lids and straws.
I don’t think kids threw these out of their car windows.
It makes me think of what the adults are teaching our children. Shame on you. You know who you are.
I thank all of the volunteers who helped as well as those who donated their time and effort for a job well done. The air cadets performed well and I recall that myself and both our children were air cadets.
Smitty Smith at Fountain Tire got rid of three mounted tires and rims. Dave O’Brien cooked up 40 burgers and 20 hot dogs along with the trimmings and Becky provided this and four cases of pop and water, $100 in all for the food.
With $100 consumed by our truck for gas, that makes for a grand total of $700.60 in donations.
I now walk and have a clear mind that at least I tried.
An old saying comes to mind that I heard the Chilean environment minister use on a show on the Nature channel. He talked about preserving fish habitat off of the Chilean coast.
“If not me, who. If not now, when,” he said.
One more saying, this time from Forest Gump – ‘Stupid is what stupid does” and that’s all I have to say about that.
Brian Parent,
Terrace, B.C.