Have You Heard the News?
I think it’s safe to say, our decision makers heard us loud and clear this summer.
You may have seen Swim Drink Fish in the news, A LOT lately. That’s because we put in the work sampling your waters to better equip our communities with the knowledge of whether it’s okay, or not, to get into the water.
Our goal of creating swimmable, drinkable, fishable water for everyone never wavers. Hence why this past week, you heard me on the radio lots, and our Lake Ontario Waterkeeper Manager, Isabel Fleischer, Toronto Coordinators, Madeline Buzzi and Megan Coad, and Director of Water Programs, Gregary Ford speaking about the City of Toronto’s sewage issues.
On Tuesday morning, CBC led their TV and Radio broadcasts with a strong message, “Swim Drink Fish is advocating for transparency from the City of Toronto.” This stemmed from a story we’d already been working on with CBC, that became much more timely after heavy rainfall to start the week.
It didn’t end there though. On the same day, later that evening, CTV News led the 6pm news block with Isabel speaking about our work at Ontario Place and the Toronto Harbour, providing factual evidence, both historical data and real-time documentation of pollution in the water.
Between leading newscasts, I was on CBC’s Metro Morning and NewsTalk 1010’s drive hour radio show, explaining our recommendations to the City of Toronto. These are the basis of our goals of creating a SwimmableTO. Also outlined in our recent Community-based Water Monitoring report released in June.
All of this past week’s coverage is part of the ongoing message being delivered that Swim Drink Fish is the group to rely on when it comes to holding those in positions of leadership accountable to those wanting to get into the water.
We didn’t leave print media out of the mix. We recently worked with the Toronto Star to highlight misleading information being delivered to Toronto swimmers.
We helped inform the community and visitors around Cherry Beach about algae washing up on shore.
Last weekend, one of our ambassadors, Catherine McKenna penned a beautiful essay in the Ottawa Citizen highlighting the need for a swimming strategy. In this piece, the former Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, and Infrastructure, referenced our role in working with the City of Vancouver to recently pass a motion declaring Vancouver a Swimmable City – connecting our work across the country.
Showing that the work happening in Vancouver and Edmonton is helping promote change in Nation’s capital, while successes in places like Kingston are helping us further move the needle in Toronto.
We’ve also been publishing our change-making content, delivering engaging, informative, and dare I say, fun content about sewage. Who knew you could make talking about poop fun? Well, our team is doing it, using messaging to continue to build a movement of people working together to create swimmable, drinkable, fishable water for everyone.
