“Look what they’re doing over there!”

Just after 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 5, 2004, the calm of the Labour Day long weekend was rudely shattered for the residents of one Tiny Township beach community.

Without warning, a group of 20 to 30 individuals armed with shovels, rakes and grass-cutters appeared at the concession end and crossed over from the adjacent Township-owned beach area.

Among the group were identified various members of the so-called "Save the Beaches" organization, including Michelle Jacobs, a director of that organization, and Derek Speers, son of Kathy Speers, founder and president of the organization.

Some members of the group immediately set to work, removing natural vegetation from the dunes and beach. Others stood by and observed. One individual in the group had a camera.

"To support and participate in the peaceful resolution of [beach access] issues..."
(Letters Patent of “Save the Beaches Inc.”)

"To promote public responsibility when using the beaches..."
(Letters Patent of “Save the Beaches Inc.”)

The beach where the incident was developing is privately owned. Arriving upon the scene and observing the actions of the group, several cottagers informed them of the private ownership of the beach and -- without asking them to leave -- requested a halt to the damage being inflicted upon the vegetation of the beach and dunes.

The request was met with loud taunts, jeers and profanity, as the actions and attitude of the group became increasingly hostile and aggressive: particularly on the part of some young men, in their teens and twenties, who were doing most of the actual physical damage to vegetation. A physically-frail 82-year-old grandmother, trying to make her way in from the shallows where she had been wading when the incident started, was mocked and verbally abused.

"Where the loose, dry sand begins is a zone of just grass, in particular a big stiff species called beach grass, or Ammophila breviligulata. ...this is a rare species because the dunes where it grows are not common.... [Its] long roots are the fibres which hold the dunes together and
stabilize the sand into mounds..."
("Tiny's Great Lakes Dunes: A rare and fragile ecosystem", by Judith Jones, Biologist, in The Tiny Cottager, Spring / Summer 2003)

"To aid in the protection of the fragile beach ecosystems and to
foster environmental awareness of the impacts of human activity in these natural areas"
(Letters Patent of “Save the Beaches Inc.”)

It was at about this point that the police were called.

Possibly aware that the police had been called, the members of the group started working even faster, uprooting whole patches of beach grass from the dunes, along with small trees and woody shrubs, and furiously digging and cutting vegetation from the beach. By the time the assault was finished, approximately 30 green garbage bags had been stuffed with vegetation and removed to a waiting pickup truck at the nearby concession road.

While the digging, chopping, stuffing and lugging were in process, the possessor of the camera took carefully posed photos of some cute children, with toy shovels and pails, innocently digging weeds by the water’s edge.

Before the police arrived, seeing no other way to try to save the beach grass of the dunes in front of her cottage, one cottager lay down on the grass, trying to physically shield as much as she could, even while a jeering young man, encouraged by others in the group, recklessly swung a double-bladed grass-cutter around her, trying to intimidate her into moving aside. Although reduced to tears, she held her ground. Brave enough while hacking beach grass or threatening a woman, the young man with the grass-cutter dropped it when the police came on the scene and didn't go back to retrieve it. It has been turned over to the police in evidence, and for forensic examination.

"In all of the years I have campaigned for "traditional use", I have NEVER met anyone who wants a "Wasaga North" in Tiny Township."
(From Kathy Speers’ campaign literature for Deputy Mayor of Tiny Township, 2003 municipal election.)

"Your cottages will be gone in six months!"
(Shouted by one of the participants in the September 5, 2004 incident described above -- applauded by those around him.)

It finally took six O.P.P. officers, in four cruisers, to bring the situation under control. What had been a beautiful, peaceful Sunday afternoon at the beach wasn't beautiful or peaceful, anymore.

The purpose of the aggressive raiding party's assault on the beach? Only those who organized it could fully answer that question. But if it was, in fact, a deliberate attempt to provoke confrontation, at the expense of the natural ecology of the beach and dunes, it failed: neither the cottagers nor the police allowed themselves to be drawn into that scripted scenario.

To the extent anything positive could come out of such a sorry affair, who comes out of it in a favourable light? The cottagers, certainly, who refused to be baited into physical confrontation, but properly called for police assistance, and who showed the day's only sense of true community feeling by being genuinely saddened at the necessity of the ensuing police investigation which may lead to criminal charges. The police officers of the O.P.P.'s Southern Georgian Bay detachment, for responding quickly and in sufficient numbers to contain the situation before it became worse. And, not least, the many members of the wider Tiny community who have expressed disgust over the incident and support for those emotionally impacted by it.

Who comes out of the incident in a less favourable light -- apart from the sadly scarred beach itself? That, you can decide for yourself.

What is very clear though -- if any further confirmation was necessary -- is the fact that the mediators appointed by the provincial government, Mr. Paul Torrie and Mr. James McKenzie, have work to complete in Tiny Township, if there is ever to be an end to such incidents and ruined Sunday afternoons at the beach.

The wounds inflicted on the dunes on September 5 will heal, given time. The wounds inflicted that afternoon on the fabric of a community are deeper.