Checking In with @waterkeepermark and Swim Drink Fish Ambassador William Tozer
For the Checking In series, Mark Mattson speaks with Swim Drink Fish Ambassador William Tozer.
William Tozer is the co-founder, educator, and Watermark Collector of Camp Onakawana in northern Ontario. This camp is for Indigenous youth to build community and learn skills that generate confidence in the great outdoors. The Tozers were the first Swim Drink Fish supporters to bring the movement to northern Canada. Learn more at www.camponakawana.com.
MM: How are you?
WT: Fine. I’m alive. I’d feel a lot better if winter would finally go away. It’s well into June and there’s still snow patches in the bush. Unheard of. I was asked how depressed I was on a scale of 1-10, 1 being not much, and 10 being really bad. I’m at 0. I don’t get depressed. Still, I’m ready for winter to go away. We live a long way away from anybody and it can get a little lonely here. Even more so with the pandemic.
MM: Where are you?
WT: Here in the bush at Onakawana (approx.. 100 km south of Moosonee, ON), with my wife Pam and our youngest son, Ben. Our youngest, Rhayne, is in Moosonee where she has access to more reliable internet. She’s completing her last week of high school at Trinity College and then she’s off to Queen’s. Our other two boys, Chris and Nolan, are in Moosonee, as well.
MM: What are you looking forward to doing this summer?
WT: I’m really looking forward to things returning to normal. Usually, there are about 20 kids running around here and we really miss that. But I guess that means we get to focus on finishing up a lot of projects here, tying up a lot of loose ends. We’re cutting logs on our sawmill into some nice siding to finish off our buildings. We’ll work on them one at a time. We’ll do finishing work on the camp library and games room, as well as on our new dorm building. There’s no train right now, and so if something breaks, getting parts gets a lot more complicated. Bearings for four-wheelers, parts for the sawmill or for tools, that kind of thing you need to plan for and you need to prepare to wait a while for. We’ve got 12 new chickens coming in any day now for eggs through the summer. We have four dogs, and so we don’t plan on going anywhere. Maybe down the river for a night or two to camp and fish. We’re content to be here at Onakawana all summer and doing what we do. We’ll be getting everything ready for when the youth return. Hopefully before the year is out.
MM: How have the last few months changed your outlook on the future?
WT: I think that this won’t be the last of pandemics. That’s something I never really considered or thought much about before. Puts a lot of things into perspective, what we can control and what we can’t. A “wait and see” approach isn’t something foreign to me, but it is certainly the approach we have to take now. Who isn’t itching to get back and get doing the things that they love? But right now seems a really good time to focus on what I can do, what I can accomplish. What loose ends I can get tied up. What exterior walls I can side. You learn a lot about patience. The little things like waiting for parts. The big things like waiting for the kids to come back. Everything will be all right.
MM: What kind of fish would you choose to be?
WT: I’ve put a lot of thought into this. I’ve narrowed it down to three:
One of those fish that drinks like a fish.
A fish with no mercury in it.
A fish that’s so foul-tasting no one wants to eat it.
MM: Are you involved in any citizen science engagement activities around water?
WT: We’ll have a water monitoring programme up and running once the youth return. We teach them how interesting and simple the science is to monitor what’s in their local water supply.
We’ve also done some really good work with people at different universities, testing for mercury levels in the fish populations here. The bottom line is, food costs in Moosonee and other northern communities has really gone up, especially in the last months, and so a lot of people with a little more time on their hands are going out on the land to fish for recreation and for food for the table. I’ve been told that people up here should do the opposite of what they normally would do. Keep the pickerel under 12 inches or so, and throw back the big ones. Definitely the same for pike. Sturgeon under three feet should be ok to eat in moderation. I hate to say it but children and women of child-bearing age shouldn’t take the chance of consuming the fish here right now. One thing that hasn’t changed because of the pandemic is that further studies need to be done. So we’ll keep doing our part.
Read more from the Checking In with @waterkeepermark series here.
Connect with us on Twitter, @LOWaterkeeper and @waterkeepermark.
