Healthy Parks, Healthy People

Tomorrow, July 21st, Ontario Parks is giving free day use to all of their Provincial Park sites. You can head to any location where you can visit the park for free and take part in fun events. All of this is for their part in the Healthy Parks, Healthy People initiative, which urges people to get outside to improve their health. Healthy Parks, Healthy People is a worldwide movement educating people about the link between better health and a better environment. This free one-day event is just one way that Ontario Parks is urging people to get outside and enjoy everything that Ontario has to offer.

Wasaga Beach is a provincial park and they are no exception to the day’s events. Head to the Nancy Island Historic Site for a free day of exploring. The site is open from 10am until 5pm. From 11am until 2pm, you can take sailor’s tours, which will teach visitors about how Nancy and her crew helped shape Canadian borders. Visit the theatre and museum and then take a trip to the lighthouse to cap off the day.

Along with visiting Nancy Island, you can partake in another healthful event, occurring at Beach 5. Join the Healthy Parks, Healthy People initiative as they launch their Butt Free Beach initiative. We all know how disgusting smoking itself is, but pair that with cigarette butts in the sand and water at your favourite beach and even those who don’t smoke have a price to pay at our beaches. Cigarette butts are the most littered item on our Canadian beaches, they don’t biodegrade and often can’t be picked up by standard beach cleaning equipment due to their small size.

Wasaga Beach is staging a clean-up of all the butts at Beach 5 on July 21st, partnering with various Wasaga Beach community groups and organizations including the Lake Huron Centre for Coastal Conservation, the Environment Network and Georgian Bay Forever, to get this job done. A free toolkit was designed to help the Wasaga Beach community and its beach become butt-free.

Research suggests that spending time in nature has immense benefits on our health and with our increasingly urban lifestyles, we aren’t getting enough time with the trees and the water. Nature Deficit Disorder is a real and harmful ailment that affects adults and kids. By keeping our environment clean and getting out in nature as much as possible, we can improve our mental and physical health. Whether you’re a resident or visitor of Wasaga Beach, you’ll have a fun and educational day.

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