Antigonish Landing is now a bit cleaner, thanks to the efforts of a small, but hard-working group of volunteers who cleaned up the trail on Oct. 13. A group of seven volunteers, armed with gloves and garbage bags, made short work of what trash has accumulated at the Landing.
“There weren’t as many people as I hoped, but I wasn’t too surprised it was quiet, because it’s a fairly new initiative,” Sally Huffman Brown, an event liaison said.
What Huffman Brown and the rest of the volunteers participated in was a cleanup of shoreline areas – one of many cleanups going on in honour of the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, an initiative by the World Wildlife Federation and Ocean Wise, where volunteers are called upon to clean up coastal areas in or near their community.
In addition to a modest number of volunteers, there was also a modest amount of trash collected at the landing – and not for lack of effort on the part of the volunteers. The volunteers participating in the cleanup were able to collect a bag and a half of debris on Saturday.
“Even though we didn’t pick up a lot of garbage, I that’s actually a good thing in my mind,” Huffman Brown said, noting the Landing gets cleaned up by plenty of its guests who don’t want to see such a natural gem get spoiled by littering.
“Donnie MacDonald, the counselor from the County [of Antigonish] was saying he walks it every day and sees someone taking initiative, cleaning it up. I don’t have their name, but they just to come pick up things here and there – that’s an example of the kinds of people who come and take care of the Landing because they treasure it,” Huffman Brown said.
Huffman Brown, along with seven colleagues from the local Atlantic Superstore, were able to comb the Landing end to end, and rid it of the garbage on Saturday morning.
Huffman Brown said the original plan was to do a cleanup of both the Landing and Brierly Brook, but, “because of the timing, we were only able to have one team go through the Landing. It was a bit too cold to do the Brierly Brook, too.”
“Technically, Brierly Brook isn’t shoreline, but we were going to combine it with the Antigonish Landing,” she added.
Huffman Brown said she hopes for a greater turnout in coming years – one with the reach to include the Brierly Brook as well.
“Antigonish Landing is one of the most wonderful resources in Antigonish for walking and enjoying nature in your backyard,” Huffman Brown said. “Anyone can create a [cleanup] event, and bring a group of people together.”
