The Water

Personal memory by Martha Cameron

1950Snake Island, Lake Simcoe, Ontario, Canada

My family had a cottage on Snake Island. We didn't have running water. The water in the lake was so pure that we could cook with it and drink it straight from the lake without any fear. When we went swimming, we could see clearly down to the bottom. By the time my own children went there, in the late 1960s, the lake water was too contaminated to drink.