hmmmm. . . yes, the pressure treated wood thing was not the smartest decision. Especially when school boards have been removing the old pressure treated play equipment for a few years now. It might have been a better idea to use that fake plastic wood product that stands up and doesn't leave those nasty splinters in your tootsies.

Didn't they have plans to put a much larger boardwalk in so those who are "differently able" could get closer to the beach to view the sunsets?

Now, (this is probably a silly question), because the Native's own the North beach now (am I correct on this?) I know there is an area that is not owned by them (somewhere between 5th and 6th street?).

I just wonder how much more stuff the "Friends" can do? Will they become a defunct organization? Or do they have plans to work with the First Nations People?

Personally, I like the South Beach much better, as less has been done to it. It is more natural IMHO.

I am also wondering if the town will stop raking the beach as well, being as though it is Native owned? Are there other people out there who get irritated by the raking machine?

Maybe, they will have the sense to pull up the board walks. I realize that they feel the Dunes are worth protecting, but I don't think the dunes have always been there. It was my understanding that they were actually man made as a wind block and to control sand flying up to 1st and hitting people in the eye. I am going to have to find some pictures from days gone by.

Maybe this has been answered somewhere else on the site.

Well, we didn't ask anyone 80 but we have posted some photos here on the SBP showing Sauble Beach in the 1920's ... and there are no dunes. I'm sure there's a plausible explanation, as also for the memory of some of the less-than-80-yrs members here who say they remember the rocks being added to the beach so as to anneal into the dunes as a way to preserve the property investments.

I don't know one way or the other, I just find it curious that this place should have precious ancient dunes while the identical shorelines just a few hundred meters either side of here have none. It just seems, well, odd. But I'm sure there's a very reasonable and logical explanation.

As for pressure treated hardwood, again, I have no data. Is it pressure-treated along the trail behind the community centre as well? Has it claimed many victims? I'm no where near 80, but in my own personal experience I have heard of people becoming sick from many causes, but personally know of none who have succumbed to deck-poisoning. That's anecdotal, and not meant as any arguement; I only say it so you can judge better my level of skepticism.

It's like the removal of peanuts from the schools, to choose a contemporary PC parallel, it is hard to take seriously when we know from the WHO that only middle class white people suffer from peanut allergy (peanuts are routinely and safely distributed as famine relief) and there is mounting evidence that, removed from the need to fight most real biothreats, western civilized urban immune systems appear to be picking hystamine fights where there are none, making up foes just to keep the defences in shape.

All of which is not to say that pressure treated wood is good or bad, and certainly not to say we shouldn't ask such questions, only to say that such research, whether or not it comes from vested sources like Mr 'Blue Flag' Smith's office, needs to be read very carefully ;)

Several people? I just thought it was one, how many poeple have the "crown patents"?

The dunes, I believe Dodge posted some interesting material on here somewhere a while ago, I saw it earlier this morning and forgot to bookmark it. It did show the dunes many moons ago.

I know there are two schools of thought regarding them, the one thing I can agree with is that there is some great plant life in the dunes themselves. So in this regard, I am a fence sitter.

As a young kid in the 1980's, I really can't remember the dunes being as large as they are now. Then again, memories are quite fallable. I do remember playing in them, and up near the big boat house there was a pond area in the dunes, where my cousin and I caught little minnows. I wonder if this little oasis is still there?

In retrospect, I agree, yes, the driving up and down the beach is not environmentally friendly. . .it would not be good if someone blew a head gasket on the shoreline, it could cause quite the mess.

mxyzptlk, I had an email that outlined the properties that had deeds to the water, because I can't copy and paste,
I will just list them for info sake.

1) The Crowd Inn

2)Twinnings (Beach Board Woodies)paid parking lot north of the Arch.

3)Pine Grove Park (area up to sixth street washrooms)from my understanding of the email, it would always be public access. A certain person got it when he bought out two different properties. (I am leaving out names here).

Interesting stuff.

Garym. . .your post was really funny and I had no idea about the "nut" thing. It is just so prevalent now. "Youse" learns something new everyday here. :)

Myx, I happen to live among said dunes of Fedy/D-Line, and I don't know much about geology, true, but I will tell you this much: if you stick a shovel into the dunes around my house, you hit ancient artifacts that resemble garden hoses, old radiators and other subterranean 'rock' formations remarkably resembling 70's-era land-fill.

Could be I'm just not digging in the right spot.

And as for photos of the old beach, yes, please do post them, we love to have photos posted to the SBP and there's a link down in the Forums on tips for ways to get your photos into your posts; for the benefit of the current discussion, though, please do click here to check out the photos already posted of our beach and its dunes.

Don't ya just love having a shared community scrapbook archive?

This one isn't as early as the neanderthal cave paintings but, W. Sherwood Fox in his book "The Bruce Beckons" refers to the dune: "On the landward side Sauble Beach is bounded by a sand dune as long as the beach itself." Page 12.

I haven't found the reference but I remember that when they made the road cut through the sand dune for County Road #13 near the Oliphant Women's Institute they found carbon from a previous forest fire which dated back many thousands of years.

Dan O.

Don't belittle your concern here, myx, if indeed that sticker did say the beach lumber was from a supply that was banned in this country, then you have, my friend, become the Deep Throat of Boardwalkgate! Assuming you can back up the sticker claim, your little rant could well cause the thing to be ripped up if there isn't a lot of clarification forthcoming.

Because what started out seeming to be a nit-pick resting on bad science actually gets quite colourful when we include that the Blue Flag people say it emphatically cannot be but your own eyes say it is ... kind of like the here-then-gone-then-here lakeshore dunes trick. It begs an explanation.

Where I would fault you, though, is not in being a whistleblower on what could maybe be a big thing, but in the particular langauge you chose to annouce it, taking the immediate sociopathic stance to blame first, ask questions later; there was, and apparently still is, precisely zero cause to allude to the Friends of Sauble Beach as being any enemy, not unless you have a smoking gun that shows the use of the alledged CCA lumber was intentionally done so as to damage the beach and there is absolutely no sign anywhere of any such intent. None. If you ask me, unless you already had done the lumber analysis to confirm the sticker did finger banned wood, choosing that particular headline greatly weakened your argument, raising ires and scoffs as the immediate response.

But yes, if the details pan out, the story is interesting and, if what your son claims was stuck to that wood is truly what that wood is, and surely a simply analysis of even a small sample of the wood would confirm it completely, then someone certain is accountable for selling the Friends on a banned substance, and banned is banned, the wood would have to go, right?

Unless, of course, it is, as you hint, only banned for interior domestic use and deemed perfectly safe for the outdoors, where, last I looked, it actually is. In that particular scenario, once again, the headline, 'tic' notwithstanding, is inviting a fight, not aiming for positive change. I am, now, very curious to learn exactly which it is.

As for the dunes, I know of the ancient peninsular forest that was burned down from the victorian landowner's greed, and I know there are real dunes along spots of the Lake Huron shoreline, I just find it hard to believe there were incredible dissappearing dunes that ebbed from and then flowed back to line only just this one stretch of one side of Lakeshore, although I would not mind in the least to be proven wrong on that.

So now, let me get this straight, because it's worrisome: you are worried enough to make a call to have someone drawn through the mud over a toxic oversight, but you are not actually so worried about the arsenic to actually have the wood tested??

So in other words, you knew it was a non-issue when you posted, or you actually didn't care a hoot about the outcome. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but, well, just seems to me that's not very, well, community-minded, y'know. It's like testing random undisclosed open-water sites and publically condemning them a danger to Life As We Know It, and then, when pressed, refusing to either disclose the location of said sites or to approve their clean-up ... ;)

If you can claim the wood is illegal and toxic, shouldn't it just stand to reason you'd be concerned enough to check your facts? Or were you trained for this work by a certain unnamed environmental assessment company?

Either the boardwalk is illegal, or it isn't. Either it is toxic, or it isn't. I hate to be confrontational, but it was you who posted this pretty hefty allegation to the front page of my website, so I would expect some teeny due dilligence, at least as much as we might get from certain newspapers. So ... which is it, myx? Do tell: Toxic wood, or don't know and don't care ... Or will your next post be about potential DHMO contamination of the beachfront?