The snow and rain held off just enough for the first real in-person community clean-up in three years, which turned out to be a resounding success. 

Hundreds of families, residents and community groups came together to freshen up the river valley as well as their own neighbourhoods collecting just shy of 500 kg of rubbish. 

Jinny Toffelmire, environment and sustainability coordinator with the town, was surprised by who showed up. 

"This year we saw 200 volunteers come out and pick up litter and almost half of those volunteers were first-timers. We had a few walkups, but there are a lot of people who pre-registered so that they could just get going right away in the morning and start picking up litter in their own community."

The day coincided with tree plantings. 

“The volunteers that came out to plant the trees planted 1 200 balsam poplar trees in the river valley, and actually on the Thursday prior to the community cleanup day, we had École Percy Pegler schools nature-based learning classes there to plant 180 willow seedlings.” 

She thanks the community for coming together to clear the town of the waste left over from winter. She also thanks the community sponsors.

"Bird scooters was also very generous and they lent out 10 E-Scooters for free to volunteers participating in the clean up. Cobs and Sobeys was there providing treats to our hungry volunteers."

Even though the official clean-up day has passed there are still ways to help. If you know of an area in need of a good cleaning you can organize your own clean up by picking up kits from the town's website. 

"We actually have litter cleanup kits available for anyone who wants to do this anytime throughout the year. We do have a sign up on our website. It's under ‘litter free community.’ So people can search that up and take a look and they can register any time to clean up any area in town."

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