Stuart Carlton 0:00
Teach me about the Great Lakes. Teach me about the Great Lakes. Welcome back to teach me about the Great Lakes, a twice monthly podcast in which I A Great Lakes novice, ask people who are smarter and harder working than I am to teach me all about the Great Lakes. My name is Stewart Carlton, and I know a lot about bringing in a bunch of ringers for your little league baseball game and still losing anyhow, despite the fact that your team was half ringers. But I don't know a lot about the Great Lakes. That's the purpose of this here show. I'm joined today by Carolyn Foley. Carolyn, welcome back. How's it going? I am all right. Thank you, Stuart. Periodic reminder that I need to come up with an opening segment, because how's it going is not an interesting thing for I mean, we care how's it going, but that's not anyway, if you have an idea teaching about the Great lakes@gmail.com we need an opening segment.

Carolyn Foley 0:47
Do we? I think you should go with your Great Lakes factoid because my understanding is you all had a very interesting conversation at diagonally, wildly inaccurate

Stuart Carlton 0:55
that, well, wildly inaccurate is. Anyway, the point is this, we have some follow up Great Lakes factoids. It's a great lakes factoid, a Great Lakes factoid, it's a great factoid about the Great Lakes. All right, our great faith lakes factoid this month is all about shells of different kinds. Um, if you didn't listen to our last episode, first of all, you should teach me about the Great lakes.com/eight. 181, with Katie Stamler. It was wonderful, super fun. Live from the International Association of Great Lakes Research Conference. Katie is amazing. So the show is amazing. That's how it usually goes. Our guests are always amazing. That's not true anyway. The point is this important snail shell follow up. First of all, snail shells. So, so somebody, and this was actually not me. I'm not saying somebody to cover up for me, but somebody who shall remain nameless, posited that maybe snails outgrew their shells and then traded shells. This is not at all correct. In fact, it's completely wrong. So snail shells are exoskeletons. They're made largely of calcium carbonate, it turns out, so snails are born with this shell and it grows with the snail. They do need calcium to make this happen. I found out in my research, I did way more snail research than I ever have before, and they actually start right away. They eat their egg casing, typically to get that initial jolt of calcium right there. And then some snails, I found this out. I want video of this. They even cannibalize their Unhatched siblings to get a little additional jolt of it's like the five hour energy of snails babies, I guess. But the good news is there aren't any nerves or blood vessels there, so they can survive and even repair minor breakages. So if you, you know, pick up a snail, look at it, and crush its shell a little bit, maybe it'll be okay. Hermit crabs, on the other hand, hermit crabs, their shell is not their exoskeleton, right? And in fact, if they're out of their shell, they look like little crawfish, or as we call them here, what do we call them here, a crayfish, but, you know, with lots more claws, and not the big, tasty ones in the front. But their exoskeleton is very soft, so they need shells, and that's when they're not part of their skeleton. They get them from other gastropods or whatever. And so that's why they crawl to bear once as they get older. And there's actually a little bit of a fitness issue there Caroline I learned, which is that, you know, there's oftentimes competition for the few gastropod shells that can find. And so it's a classic Darwinian survival of the fittest, I suppose. And all of this actually is different from a turtle shell, which is part of the endoskeleton of the turtle, their ribs and their vertebrae, they fuse to make the carapace, which is covered with little scutes that are similar to our fingernails. Question for Dr fish next month are those scutes are similar to scutes on sturgeon? I wonder. It's an important question. And the other thing I found is that turtles can sometimes regrow their shells, but a concern, since they're vascular. Oh, wait, they may or may not be vascular, but they got blood vessels, and I don't know what vascular means. Who am I kidding? But bleeding and affection can be a problem with turtles when they break their shells. And so there's an article on this. Yeah, sorry. Let me finish it up. Finish up the link, and then I would love to hear what you have to add, because this is all I got. The only other turtles I know about are the ninja variety. Anyway, we have a link in the show notes to a brief Scientific American article on snails versus turtle shells, and then we'll also put the Wikipedia hermit crab page in there.

Carolyn Foley 4:14
Okay, so first off, I'm really sorry I wasn't there, because I could have helped with this in the moment, had I been in there. But I do want to add another facet to the Great Lakes factoid that I love. Factoid facet here. So there is an effort to survey the Great Lakes. It's called the cooperative science and monitoring initiative. And there are people from the US side and from the Canadian side, who kind of work together to like they cycle around to different lakes each year, and they they sort of try to tackle some of the issues associated with that particular lake, and it's a cool effort. But one of the things that happens as part of this is a benthic survey, where they're collecting organisms. Times that live kind of at the bottom and invertebrates and all the fun stuff. In Lake Michigan, they found that the exotic, newsy, the exotic, or like new invader, aquatic invasive species, the New Zealand mud snail, New Zealand, yeah, it was first recorded in the lake in 2006 and it has increased in abundance and distribution in the last five years. So between their survey in 2015 and their survey in 2020 slash 21 because COVID messed up some of their things. So it now comprises. Now there aren't a whole lot of snails in Lake Michigan, I don't think, but of the snails that are there and the way that they surveyed them, this new New Zealand mud snail is comprises 93% of the total Lake wide snail density and 79% of its biomass. So

Stuart Carlton 5:53
that floating around in your head, so strange place my head, Alright, so here's, we'll do an episode on this. But sometime else. What I'm curious about is that, because they've increased the snail biomass, or they out completely not

Carolyn Foley 6:05
ask that question right now, let's ask that. That's what I said, scientist, and then get to our actual guests. For

Stuart Carlton 6:09
today, we'll ask that question. Tune in, says a teaser for a future episode, so people will be glued to their podcaster. Anyway, let's transition into our interview. Oh,

our guest today is Meredith Brown. Meredith is the director of special projects for Canadian Geographic, and she's a River Keeper emeritus and founding executive director of Ottawa River Keeper. Meredith, thanks for coming on. How are you today? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. Oh, we're excited, and we got a lot of things to talk about, but let's, um, let's start big picture, if you don't mind. So I was reading your bio, which is very impressive, and you've kind of a long career of thinking about caring for working with the water, I think why? What got you interested? Why are you so water oriented and fresh water oriented? What's your origin story?

Meredith Brown 7:14
I think so. I was really lucky enough to grow up in a small town in the Great Lakes watershed, on a lake, Trout Lake, and I kind of lived the swim, drink, fish dream. Every summer school was out, my mom would pack up for seven kids, put us in the station wagon, and we'd go live on the lake. I think I was barefoot most of the summer. Never got in the car, just in boats, and we drank right out of the water. And, and I think that, you know, I really believe the landscape kind of imprints on you and, and I was a paddler, and I was part of this canoe club, and kids would come from clubs that were on some of the big, great lakes where it was really dirty and they didn't want to go swimming, and they'd come to our canoe club on this beautiful lake, and they'd all tip their boat so that they could go swimming in the lake, and they loved it. And I thought to myself, like, wow, those poor kids, like, imagine living on a polluted water body and and that started my I think that started my journey and all my academic career. I, you know, I studied environments and water and spent a lot of time doing stream restoration, and I think it really stems into those early days.

Carolyn Foley 8:38
And so are you. Have you been mostly focused on smaller lakes and streams. Or have you gone to, you know, a range from, like, little ditches all the way up to big, great lakes and, like, the St Lawrence Seaway,

Meredith Brown 8:53
yeah, a real mix. I'd say I did. I moved out west to do my Masters, and I started doing that's where I did a lot of work in restoration, stream restoration. I'm actually an engineer by training with a biology background. And then I did my my masters in a more kind of in resource environmental management, which I really just think about as people management. And I did a lot of work in BC on stream restoration, and at the time, they were investing a lot of money, because with the logging practices, they were destroying these amazing salmon streams. So I did a lot of work for about a decade in BC on these big, steep salmon streams, and then I moved back east, and yeah, have primarily since I moved back east, working in the Great Lakes St Lawrence watershed. For 15 years. I was I started an organization, Ottawa Riverkeeper, part of the Waterkeeper Alliance, and worked on the Ottawa River, which is the largest tributary of the St Lawrence River. And if you think about the great. Lakes. So that you know that the St Lawrence River drains all the Great Lakes into the Atlantic Ocean. And the Ottawa River is a really huge river. The flow, at peak flow, the amount of water coming out of the Ottawa River is about the same as the amount of water coming out of the Great Lakes into the St Lawrence so it's a really big river system.

Stuart Carlton 10:20
No idea. So you talk about the river keepers, what I hear that I love river keepers, because it sounds so good, right? I mean, I like rivers. I had similar I didn't grow up as idyllic a childhood as you but, but, you know, I did a lot of canoeing stuff as a kiss a river. It's very positive in keeping I love that. So I automatically love but I realized I have no idea what river keepers are due. So what? What is a River Keeper? And why did you decide to start that? I mean, who starts a River Keeper? I guess type a people, but, but, but?

Meredith Brown 10:50
Well, it's part of this international alliance of water keepers that the movement actually started on the Hudson River, and the it was really the commercial fishermen who were feeling pretty distraught because they could no longer eat the fish out of the river because they were being polluted the PCBs and all kinds of really bad chemicals. And a lot of different people were getting together and saying, you know, what are we going to do? And they chose to kind of use the law to help make their case, and they started a giant court case against General Electric, and they won, and they used that money to invest back into the organization to start protecting the river. And other people around the country started seeing what they did on the Hudson and said, I like what you're doing. We want to do it on our river. And so this water keeper movement grew. And what I love about the water keeper movement is that I call it place based advocacy. So as a water keeper, you're actually fighting for the water where you live. So like the Ottawa River Keeper, we work in the Ottawa River watershed. We're, you know, fighting for the protection and restoration of that water body. So each water keeper group that starts are connected to a lake, a river, a bay. So it's place based, and it's I what the other thing I love about it is it's a real mix of science and advocacy and really grassroots organizing, you know? And what one of the things that I've learned over my career is it really takes people to make the changes right that you need, and so to do that, you need to organize. So I love the combination of all three of those things,

Stuart Carlton 12:40
yeah. And so is it largely? Then? Is it largely like is it? So it started with lawsuit stuff. So my back, I thought I was gonna be an environmental lawyer when I grew up, and have Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, I guess. But so is it? Is it largely through lawsuits you do that, or what kind of advocacy and science work to Waterkeepers do? Yeah, every

Meredith Brown 12:57
group is different. So a lot of groups are very litigious and but in Canada, we have different laws than you have in in the States, and so it becomes trickier for us in terms of our systems, and we you have to go through criminal courts. But you know, like at Ottawa River Keeper, we didn't go the litigious route. What we started doing was really working together to collaborate. Like one of the themes of this project I'm working on now is really it's our shared responsibility, and that's the kind of attitude I took when it came to the Ottawa River. It was like, everybody's got to be part of the solution. You know, whether you're one of the polluters or your farmer and engineer, you're a citizen, you live there, so everybody has to kind of work together. And you know, we did use the kind of name and shame tactics a little bit, I'll say, and to get municipalities on board. For example, we had a lot of really good success with eliminating combined sewer overflows and and, you know, by really helping the people in Ottawa understand how often untreated sewage was going to river. And they're like, that's obviously disgusting. And why are we doing it? It's like, right? 21st Century. So, you know, that's a really important tool. And then I think another really important tool is just building a sense of pride and a community around that river to say, like, Hey, this is my river. I want to be able to swim in it. I want to be able to eat the fish out of it. So I'm going to get involved. I'm going to stand up at my city council meeting. I'm going to talk to my my politician, my Prime Minister, and that's what it's going to really take. And

Carolyn Foley 14:45
you're close enough that you can actually talk to the because you're in Ottawa, you can talk to the Prime Minister because you're right there, potentially. That's really cool. Yeah, that's

Meredith Brown 14:53
right. Like, if you can't get it right with the river that flows through your nation's capital, how are you going to get it right anywhere? Wow, that's,

Carolyn Foley 15:00
that's a fantastic, okay, so you alluded a little bit to the project you're working on now, which is the binogamy project, right? Can you tell us a little bit about this project and kind of, what does it encompass? How did it start?

Meredith Brown 15:18
Yeah, well, it really started with, you know, as you know, the Great Lakes, St Lawrence watershed is really huge. It's the world's largest freshwater ecosystem. It's amazing. And political boundaries. There's, you know, parts of Canada, parts of America, and in our work, our our advocacy work, and in general, like we just felt like there wasn't enough attention being paid to the Great Lakes in terms of how important it was and what we have to lose if we don't take care of it. So we thought it would be really helpful to raise the profile of the Great Lakes. But as we started talking this through, we realized, like, you can't really talk about the Great Lakes without talking about the first peoples of the Great Lakes and their relationships. And what most people don't know is that in the Great Lakes St Lawrence watershed, there's over 201st nations and tribes, and that, you know, in in Canada and the United States, we often talk about, you know, we have this International Joint Commission that works to manage our shared waters in Canada and US. And they always talk about this by national approach. And we're like, Hey, this is not a binational approach. There's 200 sovereign nations in the watershed, and they don't have a seat at the decision making table, and they have a really, really deep understanding of the watershed and of the connections and of the importance of water to life. So as we started to explore that, we started working with some indigenous knowledge keepers and specifically on this. So in Lake Huron, we have the world's largest freshwater Island, Manitoulin Island, and so we started working primarily with a lot of knowledge keepers from Manitoulin Island, and they gifted us the name vinagameh. It's an Anishinaabe Moen name. So the people of Manitoulin are Anishinaabe, and this meaning of vinagameh is like clean, pure water. And what they were trying to get at by gifting this name is that we really have a shared responsibility to have clean pure water, and the emphasis really being on the shared responsibility piece. And they the indigenous people that are guiding us on this project. They really see the importance of working hand in hand, indigenous and non Indigenous people. So that's really the kind of origins of the binagame project.

Carolyn Foley 18:11
Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, think

Stuart Carlton 18:13
about that. What I'm hearing about is, is this idea of collective responsibility, and that ties, in my mind, right into the same thing you're talking about the river keepers, right in that it's your idea that that, you know, to work towards solving these I don't know if we solve problems, but to work to address problems. It's like I'm writing your grant proposal. But to work toward to addressing these problems requires this sort of groups, you know, working together. Maybe you traditionally haven't for any of a bunch of reasons, right? But that gets me into this. And so here you're defining groups. Is pretty much everybody who lives in the area, or maybe did live in, was potentially either displaced or either, you know, geographically or maybe even economically displaced, maybe both. But that gets me thinking about this idea of like responsibility. What when you say sharing responsibility? What do you mean by that? I guess, do you mean responsibility for trying to, like, restore areas and like, how do you what is equitable sharing of responsibility in your mind? Does that make sense?

Meredith Brown 19:14
Yeah, yeah. Great question. And I think the span was wide. I mean so shared responsibility means that each one of us can do something to protect water, and we're talking about protection as well as restoration. But you know, I like to start with the protection piece. And you know, what we'd love to have is that the health of the Great Lakes, St Lawrence is kind of central to everybody's decision making. So say, like, at a home level, you're like, Oh, I really want to have a nice lawn. I don't want weeds. Well, maybe you're going to start to think about like, well, what are fertilizers, or what a pesticides? What's that going to do to the web of life? Or you. Know, I'm going to salt my driveway because I don't want to slip, but that salt, where's that salt going to go when it runs off? Where's that where's that pesticide going to go when it runs off? And so if you start to think about the lakes, there's actions that you can take in your own home, or you can start to think about what's happening in your community, your neighborhood. Maybe you see like this one tributary that's flowing through your neighborhood is being destroyed, disrespected, you know, cutting down the trees. It's now hot. It can't support cold fish anymore. You could start to organize around that organizing municipality. If you're a business, you can start to think about the impacts of your business. And what are the impacts of your business on water? What kind of decisions could you be making that would be, you know, that would benefit our Great Lakes? And I think so it goes on and on, whether you work in government, whether you work in for a corporation, whether you're like, just have a family, whether you just like how you get through your daily life. There's things that you can do, and it it could be attached to your career, but it doesn't have to be. You don't have to be a River Keeper to protect the water. You can be a radio host and protect the water. Everybody can protect the water. And, you know, I have this kind of saying of like, we all want people to take action, right? Like, but before people are going to make a commitment to take action, they have to be aware, they have to have awareness, and then they have to have an understanding, and then they'll start to take an action or make a commitment. So that kind of awareness and understanding is really, really important. It's a big part of what we're doing with binagame, because we have a huge education component. I think it's really key to and and awareness and understanding comes with connecting, also having a connection to the lake, if you're lucky enough, I think that's

Stuart Carlton 21:57
really key in my mind, thinking about helping people identify in some way with the lake, right? And sort of, because, to me, that's the connection between the first thing you're talking about in the River Keeper and understand and helping everybody to understand their connection to spur action. Because I think a lot of people know, sort of, at least in theory, what small steps they can take or should take, right? They know, but they decide not to for any of a bunch of reasons. You know, good, bad, whatever. But I think once you help people make that connection, I think that's what I see. Is really important about the binagame project, right? Is it's giving people another access to identify more completely with the resource. I think so that's really cool.

Carolyn Foley 22:35
So kind of building off of this. So some of the partners on this project are, like huge names like Canadian Geographic or RBC, and one of the you know, concerns that we have, and we talk about in our own program, and I've talked with others, is like, how do you effectively support work, particularly when you're not a member of the group that has been historically, you know, kind of wronged in one way or another. And how do you bring the knowledge in in a way that's respectful and things like that? So do you have, like, something I'm really curious about is, how are do those big, big organizations? Because one of the reasons that people don't do things is they say, Well, what difference am I going to make if the big people are not doing anything, right? So do you have any examples of how these big names are really effectively supporting the work? Like, is there a connection that you need to make to them, or is it just them listening? Or, yeah,

Meredith Brown 23:38
so I think I understand where you're going with this. You know, what we want is, we want being agamemade, to be a project that everybody can get involved with and be, feel a part of and be a part of. And, you know, at Canadian Geographic, we we really excel at, like, storytelling and cartography. So those are two big pieces that we bring to this project, and and we have another partner on our project, swim, drink, fish, Canada, and they really excel at Community Engagement and creating community hubs to monitor water quality. So we have these like great tools and strengths that we bring to the project. And RBC as one of our funders, you know, they have a long history of funding water work starting. They had a blue water project, and it's morphed over time. They have this tech for nature and and, and this comes back to the shared responsibility and everybody having a role to play, but this concept of tech for nature, they love this idea. So as part of the binogame project, we're telling stories. We're creating these big, giant maps that are going to be for going out to schools all across the watershed. Free of charge, we loan these resources out. We have. Lesson plans. We have a whole education team at Canadian Geographic. We have indigenous educators involved in creating these lesson plans. It kind of tech piece that's another cool element is that we're bringing in augmented reality to the project. So you'll be on these big, giant floor maps, whether it's at a school or at an event. And as you wander around with this downloaded app, these stories will start to pop up in 3d and that's the kind of tech piece. And it's interesting because, you know, as I mentioned, the project is really indigenous guided and our indigenous elders, they actually want the they want these tech pieces because they really want to engage the youth, and they know how important it is to engage the youth, and they feel like this is one way to do it, but that's kind of how all these partners came together to start to collaborate. But the idea is like, we want to inspire people around the watershed to get involved in protecting water. And if they get inspired and feel like they hear a story about belugas and the St Lawrence estuary who are in trouble, and they're like, I gotta save the belugas, then we want to connect them with all the different groups on the ground that are doing work that they could get involved with, right? Because we know that one of the best things you can do is join others who are already doing work. So we're gathering all the different groups and organizations and projects and we want eventually, you'll be able to go to the binogamy website. We it's just we haven't launched the rich website yet. We have just a placeholder, but you'll be able to position yourself in the watershed, to see where you live, what watershed you live in, you'll be able to see what nations are in that watershed, what indigenous languages are spoken in that watershed. And you'll be able to see what groups or projects are happening in that watershed that you could get involved with. But

Stuart Carlton 26:56
I mean this map, so I got to go back this. I forgot this is how we got hooked up initially. So you say we have a big, giant map, that's actually not true. We work with the Center for Great Lakes literacy. They have a big, giant map. What you have is so much beyond this thing is ridiculous. I don't know what the size was. It was Canada, so I don't know how to do meters, but it was, it was very significant. This map you could fit, like, I mean, it was, you could fit two or three of our Seagull maps on this map, and our Seagull maps are not small. So this is amazing, and that's kind of the skill. So I just when you said that, I had to interrupt all of this cool talk to just point out so listeners, if this is something you need, all you should go to the banaga may website, and you should get in contact and figure out what you need to get this map, because it's amazing, but you probably don't have a place big enough, at least for the one that they had at the i Agler conference, so it was awesome. And I really like how these different companies, like you're bringing in people, but it's not just bringing in names or something. They're bringing in their own skills, right? And so you have the technology and things like that, RBC, I assume, is bringing in their skills, of not allowing me to exchange currency and other skills, and I don't have an account, that's what they told me. But anyway, so that's, that's, that's really, really neat. And so what's the time scale on all of that's what I'm wondering. So yeah, this is early days in the rollout, initial PR push. That's what I'm gonna call this. And but, but what is the time scale for trying to for this project? Is it open ended, or do you have, you know, a period that you're trying to work in?

Meredith Brown 28:23
Yeah, no, thanks. It's a good question. So right now, what we're doing, we have, you saw the big, giant floor map. I call it our prototype, because that's our first kick at the can with this amazing map. And now we're in this kind of stage of gathering, so we're actually taking this map to communities, to nations. We're asking them, like, Is this how you want to be reflected on the map? Do we have the languages right? Is this? And at the same time, we're letting stories percolate up, and so we're just starting, we're going to start sharing stories soon, and that's going to be ongoing for years, but in the the timelines for getting the education kits together, these big, giant floor maps with the lesson plans, with the AR stories on top, are another year. So in one year's time, those will be available. You can get on the website. You can book the map, the maps, the map and the lesson plans, they'll go out. You can have them for three weeks. We get them to you, everything free of charge. You ship them back. We get them to the next school. So in about a year, that's going to be ongoing. We're also talking about doing a tour, bringing artists on board to talk about the Great Lakes, to share the tools, etc. So the project is is continually growing with excitement, and we're always like, we're still trying onboarding new funders, because we have so many exciting elements that we want to continue with and we need to develop. But it's a multi year initiative, and we'll see. I mean, our goal is to just have it keep to keep. Going. And I think one of the exciting pieces is, like building this alliance of nations around the watershed. And the piece that the nations are most interested in is this concept of, like reframing how we think about water and our relationship with water. And they're interested in this concept of legal personhood for water. So there's so many amazing elements of the project that just, yeah, it's really exciting, fantastic.

Carolyn Foley 30:27
I do want to this is really exciting. Thank you for sharing all of this with us, because I agree with you that it's this is kind of my first time learning about this, because I didn't get to go to the conference, but it I can imagine being if somebody had brought something like this to my classroom, I can imagine that I do want to make a acknowledge swim, drink, fish, because I forgot to acknowledge them. Had a lovely, lovely conversation back in 2021 with Mark Mattson, and so that's episode number 45 and they are doing a lot of really cool work helping support

Stuart Carlton 31:01
this. I was part of our, part of our season of giving. Wasn't it? Every year we do a Halloween episode on this, a little bit goofy and self indulgent, as opposed to this. And so we try to make up for it by featuring nonprofits. So yeah, that was a very fun conversation with with Mark that you had excellent.

Meredith Brown 31:18
Yeah, they're great. I love it. I do want to just also mention, like, one of our collaborators on this project are filmmakers, and they created a documentary series called Great Lakes untamed. So if you're interested in kind of natural history of the Great Lakes, and they're amazing documentary makers, like, they worked on planet Earth, and these, like, you know, that's the kind of quality that we're seeing. And so you can watch those doc, there's, it's a three part series. In the USA, they have a partnership with Smithsonian. So you can watch them on Smithsonian. And in Canada, you're watching, you can watch them on TVO. There's links to it on the binogamy website, binogamy.org but again, just helping to build awareness around the amazing, incredible natural history of Great Lakes, which is just mind blowing. Well,

Stuart Carlton 32:15
Meredith, it has been really amazing having you on talking to us about not only, I mean, we've gone everywhere, from river keepers to looking just Great Lakes wide, right, learning about all sorts of cool projects, amazing things you've done, amazing people that you've partnered with. And it's all really fascinating. And most importantly, has given me ideas for at least a half a dozen follow up episodes, which is, which is reason number one that we have guests on to keep eating the content machine. But Reason number two we have guests on is to actually ask them two questions. And the first question is this, if you could choose to have a great donut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch, which would you choose?

Meredith Brown 32:53
No contest, I'd go for the great sandwich, great

Stuart Carlton 32:58
sandwich, Team sandwich. That's fantastic. And I forgot that's where you are in Ottawa. You were somewhere in Ottawa.

Meredith Brown 33:05
I'm yeah, just north of Ottawa and a little village called Wakefield. Wakefield,

Stuart Carlton 33:09
all right, well, one day, this is a lie. I'm gonna be honest. This is a lie. One day I'm gonna go to a Wakefield, and I'm gonna want a sandwich. I would love to go to Wakefield. Just the odds of it happening are very small, but it's the it's the we rest our show in Little White Lies sometimes. But so when I'm in Wakefield and I want a really great sandwich, where should I go? Oh,

Meredith Brown 33:30
well, you would go to Juniper farm. So we have this, like, amazing network of organic, regenerative farmers in our region might go to Wakefield. Alright, you you have got to come to Wakefield. Stewart, you're going to love it. Everybody loves coming to Wakefield. And I'll take you swimming in the river. We can swim down the rapid. So, Juniper farm, organic farm, they make the best farm sandwich. It's so delicious. So, yum, yum. Alright,

Stuart Carlton 33:59
I'm headed there,

Carolyn Foley 34:03
in theory. And so I was just looking at pictures. And yeah,

Stuart Carlton 34:08
like Juniper farms are just kind of pictures in general,

Carolyn Foley 34:12
well, pictures of the food at Juniper farms, bread, the

Stuart Carlton 34:17
bread. All right, I'm going there Juniper farms.com. Anyway, you asked the question. Okay,

Carolyn Foley 34:21
sure. So our second question is, what is a special place in the Great Lakes that you'd like to share with our audience? And it can be one that you've already mentioned, or you can add another one. But also, what makes it special?

Meredith Brown 34:36
Well, I mean, that is such a hard question to ask, but I'd be remiss if I didn't say the Ottawa River, because I do think it's like an amazing, gorgeous, beautiful, Wild River in so many places. And in fact, one of the things I love about our big, giant floor map, when you look at it, you see how important the northern part of the watershed is. To the Great Lakes. You look at the area the Ottawa River watershed, north of the St Lawrence, and you look at north of superior, and that's my other place, like the North Shore of Lake Superior is like, for me, I think one of the most beautiful places in Canada. And there's so many beautiful places in Canada, but it's wild and rugged and so beautiful the rocks and so I really love those two areas. And for me, it's about I love the wild places and and there's so many. We're so blessed to live here in the world's largest freshwater ecosystem. Well, Meredith

Stuart Carlton 35:39
Brown, Director of Special Projects for Canadian Geographic and Riverkeeper, Emeritus, founding executive director of Ottawa Riverkeeper. Thank you so much for coming on and teaching us all about the Great Lakes. You

that's amazing stuff, and it's interesting to bring in all these corporate because really what they're talking about, in all honesty, it's sort of a variation on the Sea Grant model, in some ways, not that they aren't. Sea Grant's not the only one to do with this, but it's similar what we try and do at Sea Grant, right where it's like just all these different levels. There's out research education pieces and really trying to do everything you can to facilitate others and make it easy, you know, no cost, minimal cost, and stuff like that. But to see doing it coming from kind of the corporate side, is kind of a cool way to take a crack at this, right?

Carolyn Foley 36:46
But then also the importance of, like, absolutely everybody. I think what I would have loved to ask, but I stopped myself, because I'm like, nope, ask that in a year, is like, about the stories that pop up, and what are kind of some of the because when I've seen similar presentations on like, there's one along the Detroit River where they're telling stories about things that happen, I mean, people I don't know. It's just, it's really, really cool to see how many different ways that people can be tied to locations. Yep, no, that sounds

Stuart Carlton 37:17
really important. Remember, we had that conversation with Rachel haverlock of the freshwater lab. She's an English prof, but she like, collects people's water stories, which was just fascinating, like that, to hear that. And I, of course, do a lot of qualitative research. And so stories are really interesting. Once I once I started, you have to learn how to you have to learn how to be a qualitative researcher. I came from a quantitative background, and I was really suspicious at first, but the more I get into the field, and the more I look at stuff, the more important the idea of stories comes to me, and you know, whether or not it's research, or whether it's just, it's just, or whether or not it's just hearing people's stories, I think it's really powerful and really important. I agree.

Carolyn Foley 37:56
And we have no announcements because you did all the crazy things earlier this year, so we can just

Meredith Brown 38:02
do it right.

Carolyn Foley 38:06
Teach me about the Great Lakes. Is brought to you by the fine people at Illinois, Indiana, Sea Grant. We encourage you to check out the great work we do. At i i Sea grant.org, and at i L, I m, Sea Grant, on Facebook, Twitter, sort of and other social media.

Stuart Carlton 38:21
Teaching about the Great Lakes is produced by hope charters, Megan Gunn and Renee miles. Carolyn Foley is our senior producer, and Ethan Chitty is our associate producer and fixer. Our super fun podcast. Artwork is by Joel Davenport, and the show is edited by the Austin Quinn rose Quinn we thank you for everything.

Carolyn Foley 38:38
If you have a question or comment about the show, please email it to teach me about the Great lakes@gmail.com or leave a message on our hotline. I don't know if anyone has ever called the hotline, but

Stuart Carlton 38:53
voice on air 1000s of listeners,

Carolyn Foley 38:56
if you call us and leave a message at 765, 496, i i S, G. You can also follow the show on Twitter at Teach Great Lakes. But like the shell of a bleeding out turtle, things are a bit cracked there these days. You should have gone with the snail anyway. Thanks for listening.

Stuart Carlton 39:16
But they don't bleed out. It's the point

Carolyn Foley 39:20
creating those links.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai