An Ohio city that shares Lake Erie with Southwestern Ontario has thrown down the gauntlet, declaring the lake has rights just like a human being.

This article by Jennifer Bieman and Ellwood Shreve appeared in The London Free Press on, March 10th, 2019.

Sure, Toledo’s bold step endorsing a bill of rights for the lake is already generating pushback, including questions whether it can stand up in court and be enforced.

And, yes, while the move in a referendum was backed by 61 per cent of voters in the city of 280,000, the turnout was a meagre nine per cent.

But if a lake once so filthy it was practically given up for dead, can be embraced by one city as something that deserves better, what’s that say to Southwestern Ontario – its own hands far from clean in Erie’s woes – about upping the ante to help protect the lake that runs hundreds of kilometres along the region’s underbelly? MORE...