Bring a wheelbarrow and a rake, but leave the tractor at home, jail food is not that great!
To the Expositor:
Dear Mrs. Robinson,
Let me try to help to relieve your frustration I felt from your letter of October 15, 2014 you wrote to the Expositor (‘Condition of Providence Bay beach causes surprise for tourists, Page 5). And I do sympathize with you.
I’m sure you think we Prov-arians never tried to solve the beach bark problem, let me give an update.
In the late 1950s some gardeners in Providence Bay wanted to mix the beach bark and sawdust with their Sand City gardens, to give their gardens more body with “organic matter.” With very few tourists roaming the beach back then-we were actually doing the town folks a favour, not trying to get rid of the bark. As time went on Mr. Cornish at the Providence Bay Park asked my Dad if he would consider moving all the bark off the beach, just to get rid of it.
So Dad, Melvin Liscumb, Keith Sterling and I would shovel load after load into a wagon box pulled by our horses and dump it elsewhere off the beach.
Years went by and the lake water kept going down. In the late 1950s water was so high it would splash on the road on a windy day over past where the sand ends and the rock begins. So now we have low water levels and more beach-so the folks in Providence Bay worked very hard to rake and clean the beach for years, but without machinery the job was too large.
So a friend and I brought our tractors and hauled countless loads of bark off the beach and even cultivated some sand down at the waters edge.
Moe and MNR came by and told us never to bring our tractors there again, or there would be heavy fines and may be jail time for polluting the environment.
In the mid-1870s a sawmill company cleared the land of trees and left their sawdust behind in the river and lake. Also bark came off thousands of logs that were in booms in the Bay waiting to be loaded onto boats and barges for faraway destinations.
In Sudbury you have maintains of tailings that are not that pleasing to the eye. Well we have the lumber company tailings that is also an eyesore.
So, Mrs. Robinson, I guess I’m saying that we hate to be scolded with all the letters about how we sit on our hands and do nothing. Yes, the Providence Bay folks really care but the government has us tied in a knot.
So bring a wheelbarrow and rake. I’ll help you. But I’m not bringing my tractor, as I heard the food in jail is not that great.
P.S. I’m on your side. But!
Lyle Dewar
A local farmer close to the beach
Providence Bay
