Foundation leads charge to save Lake Winnipeg

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This article was published 24/06/2011 (5523 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TROUBLED Lake Winnipeg may have a new saviour.

The Walter and Duncan Foundation, which specializes in part in freshwater protection, wants to help bring together the numerous private, public and government organizations working to save the 10th-largest freshwater lake in the world. “It’s great to recognize the work the foundation is doing — and on Lake Winnipeg in particular,” said Bill Blaikie, the province’s conservation minister, at an event held by the foundation Thursday.

Tom Axworthy, the foundation’s president and CEO, said they met this week with more than two dozen groups working on helping the lake. “This is one of the largest environmental problems in the world, so there’s a lot of work for everyone to do,” Axworthy said.

“We’re here to try to learn if this foundation can contribute.”

As well, the foundation has hired Vicki Burns, the former head of the Winnipeg Humane Society and who recently helmed the Community Foundations of Canada’s Lake Winnipeg Watershed Initiative, to co-ordinate the various groups helping the lake.

Axworthy, who has visited Lake Winnipeg since childhood and who describes the lake as “one of the places I love most,” said he knows firsthand the body of water is in crisis.

“I brought my grandchildren to visit the lake last year and they couldn’t go in the water because of the algae,” he said.

“Just in my lifetime I’ve seen the deterioration of the lake. We want to help turn this around.”

The foundation was created in 1965 by then federal minister of finance Walter Gordon, his wife Elizabeth, and his brother, Duncan, a Toronto chartered accountant.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca