GBA Update Spring 2025

West Carling Association In Memoriam – Don Clement

Wood’s Bay Community Association Julia Webster

Julia is on the Wood’s Bay Community Association board and has volunteered for several years with the Georgian Bay Biosphere, supporting their Kids in the Biosphere program. This year, she went out of her way to organize a family hands on workshop with GBB called ‘If Skulls Could Talk.’ Julia has also organized creative events in collaboration with the Friends

One of the things that set Don apart from the crowd was that he was a giver. That’s a pretty scarce commodity in today’s society. – Bruce Davidson

of the Massasauga Park, the Township of the Archipelago and White Squall. In addition, Julia works with a team of WBCA volunteers to manage their 16 fire pumps, many owned by the association. Each spring they visit each fire pump to ensure they are in working order and have all their necessary components in their fire pump boxes which are clearly marked and visible from the water. Each year, at WBCA’s AGM, Julia and her team demonstrate how to use a fire pump, all of which are the same type and model and give members of the association an opportunity to practice using one.

Don volunteered to assist in finding a suitable location for an osprey platform in the Snake Islands and offered to use his new pontoon boat to transport the materials. His love for ospreys has inspired the WCA board to build a new osprey nest in his honour. Don’s sense of community inspired many others to get involved with the WCA board. – Allison Needham

POEM

Sense of Place

By Claudette Young, 1999

A lifelong advocate for the Bay, Claudette has dedicated years to protecting its fragile waters and shores. As Chair of the Aquaculture Committee and a GBA Honourary Life Member, she worked alongside scientists, water experts, and volunteers to keep these waters thriving.

Written in 1999 at the start of her GBA service, this poem reflects her enduring love for Georgian Bay, its transformative beauty, and our responsibility to preserve it. Claudette’s poem captures the essence of Georgian Bay—not just as a place, but as an experience. Her words reveal a deeper connection between nature and our own creativity, reminding us of the delicate balance that sustains our shared home.

This place of life, of spontaneity, this place of dawn and sunset and starlight, This place of soil and sunshine, of rock and waves, Of birch and pine and maple woodland, Of bear and loon and deer dwelling with us, This Georgian Bay, and its spectacular displays of the transformative Powers of nature. All this we are discovering, the first time for some, As an integral community – An earth community – A place shared. Here we experience our inherent nature and the values that evoke in us our deepest moments of Reflection Our revelatory experience of the ultimate mystery, And the interconnectedness of this great mystery’s creations. Here, in our intimate presence to the windswept islands and lapping lake, We receive those larger intuitions that lead us to dance and sing ‘round campfire light, And swim naked in the coolness of dark waters. Intuitions that activate our imaginative powers in their most creative functions.

Our deepest human sensitivities emerge from this region. Here we are beckoned to slow down, take Sabbath time, take in This mystery. This special place. We who live and play here, constitute a single organic community With the Bay and the rock and the forest peaks, With the sunlight and rainstorm, With aquatic life and sandy shoreline, With all that inhabit this dwelling. We are all in some manner needed by each other. We may disdain the insects or the weedy lakebed, We may resent the heat of summer or the icy chill of winter, We may try to impose our mechanistic patterns on the biological rhythms of this place, But as soon as one of these natural functions is disturbed in its proper expression, We begin to be in trouble. We experience loss.

Authentic living and communion is realized here. Contentment and joy is our reward, if we but Strive … to keep a sense … of the mystery… of this place.

This, too is what inspires our rites and rituals, our home life, And our joy in our children.

7

Spring 2025 • GBA UPDATE