My Watermark is Little Whitefish Lake just outside Parry Sound, Ontario.

We’ve been very fortunate so far that our water quality is in the top 10% of all lakes in Ontario. We have a very active lake steward who happens to be an engineer in water chemical chemistry and a group of people who take water quality samples every three weeks.

We’re also very fortunate that were on top of our watershed, nothing but rain water and natural spring water flows into our lakes. The only thing that concerns us is runoff that comes from a local golf course. One of their greens runs off into our lake and were concerned about phosphates and fertilizers. That's why were so active in monitoring what we have.

Last year I started doing invasive species testing and were fortunate to have no zebra mussels, but we do have spiny water fleas. And once you have them there's not much you can do about it. They eat the food that the little fish in the lake eat. That's why we monitor everything that goes on in our lake, to maintain this level of quality for future generations.

Another concern we have is the new regulations Ontario has brought out for hydro generation. They apparently sold off the rights to our water to a private company whose sole interest is to generate power, regardless of what our water levels are. We have a dam that controls our lake levels and the private company now owns the dam. So they can drain as much water as they see fit, which alters our ability to get to other lakes via boat. It also affects our shoreline access as well and nobody is happy about it.

So that’s why we want to bring the knowledge and education to other lakes and water organizations, so they can take the right steps to saving their water. Water awareness is something that we all should take more seriously in our everyday lives. It’s unfortunate that not everybody can experience the same quality of water in our country.