Yes, these are barbeque coals. Hot barbeque coals. Dumped in the open parking area beside the children's playground next to the Sauble Library. There was another pile just like them behind a rock right on the edge of the playground by the slides, that pile covered with trash. I found two nearly full bottles of water in that trash and poured it on the heap of coals; not nearly enough, but I figured the pattern in the ashes would maybe alert young children (older than the toddlers, anyway) not to pick up the odd grey 'stones'.

I stuffed the trash into a grocery bag they'd left and tossed it into the nearby bin. I also called up the By-Law enforcement office (519-376-8592) to alert them that they'd need a shovel and a steel pail to finish the job.

Tell me something: what total lunatic madness of stupidity possesses people into thinking it is OK to dump their still burning barbeque coals onto the unprotected ground of a children's playground? What mental processes are there in those brains as they pour the coals on the open ground and then scatter their litter over them and drive away? Do they think elves will sneak out of the trees and clear it all away? Or do they drive off snickering to themselves about the burnt toddler fingers and schoolchildren rushed to emergency and think "heh, that'll teach the little darlings to dare play in a park!"

It staggers the imagination.

Last year it was dozens of bottles smashed on a residential street, no doubt done just to hear the Sound of Breaking Glass and to hear their buddies howl with laughter and get their date's empty scorns. Gee, I know what would be fun! Let's cover the street with glass shards! The year before it was broken glass on the beach by the famous Sauble Sign. Oh, hey, looks like a great place for a bust up! Nothing cheers the heart like blood on the sand! The year before that BBQ coals dumped right on the beach by the Crowd Inn, only not just dumped as a trap for the innocent and naive like today's batch, but these were then thinly covered with sand! A busy beach-front booby-trap! Oh, hey, that's jolly good fun, eh what? Get the cam, dear, we gotta catch this!

These are people who presumably hold day-jobs of some responsibility "back home" and that makes you pause to think a bit too.

Thing is, y'know, this isn't a private beach, it isn't secluded and it isn't remote. They say tens of thousands of people pour into Sauble on weekends like this -- dozens, if not hundreds of people witnessed all these random acts of stupidity and they said nothing, and they did nothing. That doesn't make them better than the idiots, it makes them complicit in the stupidity. Sure, our by-law officers are busy and can't be everywhere at once, but they do have an answering service and they won't know what's happened unless someone tells them.