CHAPTER
2 – Defiling the Environment
By the end of high
school (1955), I was a rather disturbed young lad. The Canadian
government had allowed
the American
military to
install Bomarc missiles (aimed at the USSR) on Canadian soil
south of a line of Distant-Early-Warning radar stations. People
were building
bomb shelters in their back yards, especially in the Toronto
area. I didn’t think that the Soviets would be crazy enough
to start World War 3, but I was rapidly coming to the conclusion
that all
adults were hypocrites, criticizing militarism in church and
at tea parties, but otherwise doing nothing about it.
My father’s graduation present to me that summer was a 2-month
canoe trip into Northern Ontario through a camp (Keewaydin) that
specialized in long trips. One of my favorite stops along our route
was at Welcome Lake, appropriately named because of the superb campsites
that had been prepared on its central island. We had a “rest” day
there and took time to enjoy the birds, the fish, the peace and
tranquility.
Nine years later, my brother and two fellow graduate
students asked me to lead them back to this wonderful
spot. It took some
persuasion of the Canadian National Railway conductor to stop
the train in the middle of nowhere and let off 4
passengers and 2 canoes
from the baggage car, but we took a compass heading and worked
our way across many lakes to our coveted destination.
After 3 days my
brother began to complain about the cold, rainy weather, but
I reassured him that he would soon be on an island
in Welcome Lake, the Shangri-La
of Canadian camp sites, with a wonderful place to dry his things
by the fire. When we arrived, however, we found all 3 campsites
were buried under thousands of beer cans!
Imagine my shame and
chagrin. The cans were all American. Here I was, an American
by birth, showing my Canadian
brother and friends
one of the prettiest spots in their country that had been ruined
by the thoughtless action of fishermen. I railed in protest,
shouting at my imagined spoilers: “If you guys had the means to fly
these cans in here, then surely you could have flown the empties
home!” Many years later (in 1997) I returned to that lake
to check it out and found, to my relief, no sign that man had
ever molested this lovely place. It had healed completely.
Another shock came in 1967. I was in Bermuda for a brief holiday,
swimming on the beach near the southwest corner of the island. I
wore a new bathing suit that was bright yellow, but it soon became
irreversibly stained with bunker oil. I asked the Bermudans how
their beaches could have become so fouled, and they calmly replied
that sea captains often chose to clean out their holds in the middle
of the ocean. Suddenly, I became aware that Jacques Cousteau was
right: the oceans may be vast, but their capacity as a dumping pool
was not limitless. Laws were passed eventually to stop this thoughtless
practice.
A similar, yet different,
example of human waste came bluntly to my attention in 2002,
as I was exploring
a remote
island called
Aldabra in the Indian Ocean. I approached its northwest shore
in predawn darkness, trying not to step on sea turtles that
were laying
eggs in their nests. As the character of the beach slowly became
more apparent in the dawn, I was amazed to discover dozens of “flip-flops” littering
the sand.
This photo was taken
after a few more widely scattered scandals had been tossed
together, but it represents
the density
of these
things over an area of beach only 2 or 3 times as large as that
shown here. Apparently they fall off passing boats and float
for many miles without much prospect of disintegrating any
time soon.
Happily, they don’t release CO2, but they reflect man’s
careless attitude toward Nature.
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