This was a unique book launch. There was a blessing/thanking of the Mimico Creek by a Mississauga Knowledge Holder, a presentation by Toronto and Region Conservation Authority on the Mimico Watershed, poetry reading, an introduction to the Watermarks Project, art and photographs spread about the room and an opportunity to talk to various interesting people brought together by Nina Munteanu.

All of it was in honour not just of Nina’s new book, but in honour of water. There is no doubt that water is under siege. The Mimico Creek watershed, in a heavily urbanised area, is just one example.  Understanding of what rivers require to stay healthy has advanced significantly over the last 50 years. Where once the river was expected to run along man-determined paths, through man-determined structures replete with concrete and culverts, now they are being rehabilitated with plants, trees and naturally meandering paths, all designed to promote healthy water and the concomitant healthy ecosystem when water is clean. In selected areas of this creek, a lot of work has been done to try clean the heavily poluted Mimico Creek, including pulling out concrete and weirs, replanting with native species and attempting to re-route the river along its natural path.

Part of the problem is that government only sees the importance to something if it has some sort of benefit to its constituents, generally economic but not necessarily so. The Watermark project is an attempt to gather information about the significance of various body of waters into one place.  As explained on  www.watermarkproject.ca

• When you contribute a story to the archive, you register the waterbody in a national database of important waters.
• You document the value of that waterbody to you and your community.
• You help researchers identify waters where people swim, drink, or fish, so that those uses can be protected in the future.
• You provide evidence that ensures environmental laws can be used to safeguard your waters.

Identify, value, register – all critical pieces to keeping water, from small creeks through to large lakes healthy.

My editor, Nina Munteanu, is publishing a new book, Water is …. and I’m going to her book launch. This is quite exciting because water is so very, very important. For years we have thought about water as a conduit – for fishes, for drinking, for recreational use. But over the past few years, it has become evident that it is critical to the life cycle for so much in the environment.

A few years ago, I went to a talk given by an Australian wine producer. It was an eye opener. The early Australian settlers had damned the run off from the spring rains. These rains brought heavy flooding with its concomitant damage and then the water disappeared. Australia is not a country blessed with the amount of water Canada has so it is understandable that they would try to store the water for use during their dry summers.

Oh, my was that a mistake. No one realised how important the spring run off was. Whole species of plant, animal and bird were driven to the edge.  Reinstating the run off, breaking those damns, surprised everyone in the vineyard. In that short, wild, rushing time, trees, which everyone though dead, leafed out. Birds no one had seen in decades appeared, building nests and raising young. Animals which had been hiding popped their heads up and foraged happily. It was both a humbling lesson in how a reasonable desire to conserve water could wreck havoc on the environment and an inspirational lesson on how nature can crawl back from the edge, given the opportunity.

And all it took was to break the dams.