My name is Cindy McCarthy.

My water body, I come from an area where you can’t turn sideways without seeing a lake or a river, and I lived really close to Lake Simcoe, but my water body is the Talbot River. My dad was born and raised on the Talbot River, his family farm. And I was born and raised very close to the Talbot River so that’s my water body. Now it just wouldn’t be acceptable, but we were often allowed to roam pretty freely. I had a lot of siblings, there were 8 of us.

We’d sneak away on a Saturday or Sunday morning. We’d do the little hobo thing and off to the river. In retrospect, it probably was relatively safe. We spent a lot of time there, all year round. Not in the winter, but Spring, Fall and Summer. That was our playground, it was great.