Kevin Bering on Origin:

Bering: CHML 900 am in hamilton is going to interview me monday morning at 7:40 am about surfing in lake ontario in winter and about my finding hyperdermic needles in the water. Hopefully i dont sound like an idiot or make a bad name for us lakesurfers.


Magilla Schaus: Kevin just be truthful about your passion for surfing and caring about stopping the polluting of our waves and you will do fine. You can call back the radio station and give them a list of questions that you would like to be asked at the interview. That way you can better prepare yourself.

1. The Bridge is a historic Great Lakes surf break first ridden in the early sixties by members of the Wyldewood Surf Club.

(These Canadian surfers were as stoked about surfing at The Bridge as you and others still are. Vern Ferster of the Wyldewood Surf Club from the Burlington/Hamilton area moved to Tofino in the 70's and started one of the first surf shops there.)


2. Surfers ride at The Bridge all the time when there is surf and regularly have cleaned that beach. The last surfer beach clean was part of the Great Canadian Beach Clean Up in 2005. At that beach clean up a hypodermic needle was found on the beach with an incredible bunch of junk ranging from Tim Horton's cups, plastic pieces that fish can ingest, and a full range of garbage including baby diapers. The Toronto Surf Club, The Bridge Crew Surf Club, the Wyldewood Surf Club, and the Eastern Surfing Association-Great Lakes District were part of the 2005 Great Canadian Beach Clean Up at The Bridge.


3. There are still two legendary Canadian surfers still riding at The Bridge. Frank Kunkel of Stoney Creek and Longboard Steve of the Hamilton area. These two Canadian Great Lakes surfers were among the first wave riders at The Bridge and on the Niagara Peninsula.


4. There are more surfers around here in the warm weather than in the winter. The surfers who ride the Great Lakes in the winter are off the measured scale with their enthusiasm for wave riding. The numbers of surfers in this part of the lakes constantly fluctuates back and forth in numbers. I remember summer days in the sixties at Wyldewood Beach that saw the same amount of surfers as there are now on a good day at The Bridge, Area 51, and The Palmwood. There are a lot of surfers that were not around in the sixties that started to surf later on that never witnessed what I saw in the founding days of surfing in this part of the lakes. (Now as it was back then we don't drop in on others waves. That isn't the way to treat other surfers.)

It is pollutants that can kill surfers, which is a more core problem that always needs to be addressed before anything else. That is what should be focused on. All other issues are secondary to the loss of human life.


5. The biggest problem about surfing in the Great Lakes is that the waves are not as consistant as the ocean. Although there are flat spells on the ocean too. However Great Lakes surfers surf in wave conditions that would put off many ocean surfers. The second problem in the lakes is access to the water and the reoccuring pollution.


6. The thing about water pollution is that you cannot always see it. It can be chemical, biological, or nuclear.

7. Hypodermic sharps should absolutely never be disposed of by throwing them in the water. Medical waste polluters are criminals. It is like placing a little land mine on the beach or the water. This is uncivilized. An accidental hypodermic needle stick could possible cause a person to get HIV, or Hepatitis and lead to a person dying.

8. Almost every six months now another invasive species turns up in the lakes coming from ship ballast.


8. The dumping of partially treated and untreated human waste from municipal water treatment plants during high rain events into both the U.S. and Canadian sides of the Great Lakes shows that our world is not as advanced or enlightened as it likes to believe it is.