[LINK] "Ontario group to showcase importance of Great Lakes"

[rfmcdonald]

I like this idea. The Toronto Star's Allan Woods reports.

For some they mean the beach. For others they mean work. They can be a draw for tourists, but are often just a backdrop for locals.

If you are an environmentalist, you might see them as a living, breathing thing in need of protection, but ask the average high school student and they’ll roll their eyes like they would for any five-point answer on a geography test.

On their own, they are Ontario, Superior, Huron, Erie and Michigan. Together they are the Great Lakes.

You can see them from space, but now a group of prominent Ontarians, helped along by the province’s lieutenant-governor, Elizabeth Dowdeswell, is looking to put them on the map — so to speak — with a campaign to brand the importance of the world’s largest freshwater ecosystem onto peoples’ hearts and minds.

“Why not? The Amazon rainforest is the lungs of the planet. Why can't the Great Lakes be the heart and arteries of North America, or something like that?” said Douglas Wright, who is leading the initiative that will be unveiled next month at the Great Lakes Public Forum in Toronto.

It has been dubbed “Greatness — The Great Lakes Project” and the idea is deceptively simple: create a marketing campaign to embed the lake system deeper into the public consciousness. To get people thinking not only about the environmental threats and challenges, but also about the potential lapping at the shores of communities as diverse as Toronto, Thunder Bay, Toledo and Tobermory.