Caring citizens help keep picking up Tillsonburg litter
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Tillsonburg has a lot of volunteers that all contribute to making it the best town to live in Canada!
We have so many amenities that other towns our size don’t have because they were built or fundraised into existence by volunteers, and they keep working hard, adding more to the community.
There are also many volunteers who the community rarely meets or never knows about, that give their time in churches, support groups, or simply picking up garbage.
Yes, we have a growing troop of caring citizens who walk the streets and our super trails system, picking up litter and garbage of which there is an amazing amount. I like to think of them as our Fourth Street Trash Angels!
But we also have some not so nice, nay selfish and rather disgusting citizens that think the streets and trails are a great place to dump everything from needles to tires and just about anything you can imagine.
A friend and hubby try to keep Coronation Park and Carroll Trail clean and pickup on the two days that the very helpful Town employees empty the garbage bins, as well as their finds like car batteries. The volunteers also inform the appropriate people when there are larger items they can’t pull out of the Otter Creek, like tires or shopping carts.
A wonderful surprise for them a couple weeks ago was discovering someone had gone down the riverbank and picked up broken flowerpots, boots, cement blocks, boards and lots of other stuff in the creek! They were thrilled that others are helping to clean.
It took them a whole hour to clean up the Kolin Smith Memorial Skatepark. Kids need to learn the concept of using a garbage/recycle bins.
The litter at the Water Park playground is often four feet from the trash can, so why is there a mess? Parents need to start picking up too!
My friend assisted and in one clean up session they filled over four large garbage bags. And found one sewing machine. Really? A sewing machine?
Where the trail meets North Street, they discovered the shattered remains of a large aquarium in the creek. They are hoping to find someone who can get the glass out. There was also graffiti, same as the Carroll Trail!
For all that we say we must change and clean up the world, people still toss their food and drink containers, and cigarette butts out car windows. It’s time to really change.
There are so many more stories to tell and no more room in this article, except to say, THANK YOU to all our street and trail walkers and anyone who bothers to bend over to pick up, for you are indeed our Trash Angels.
lbeechey@rogers.com
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