Brewing Storms: Cuts, Tensions, Thirst

By Leni Spooner, creator of Between the Lines.

Childhood by the Shore

I grew up on the North Shore of Lake Superior in a kinder and gentler time, when children could wake in the pre-dawn, jump on a bicycle, and race toward the lakeshore to catch the day’s first light.

There were two favourite destinations. If we woke late, we pedaled to the working harbour, where grain elevators and train tracks hemmed in the shoreline. It wasn’t the safest playground, but back then Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest was as much a child’s responsibility as it was a parent’s lesson. Dipping a toe wasn’t always possible — but watching freighters load under the looming elevators was its own adventure.

If we managed to wake early, though, we headed the other way — a twenty-minute bike ride up the shoreline road to the Silver Inlet boat launch. At that launch, the reward was breathtaking: unbroken views of Superior’s sunrises. That first hour, when the rising sun made the water sparkle almost blindingly, was pure magic. The air was fresh and sharp, the waves slapped the rocks with a rhythm that felt like it powered your very cells. I dare you to find a commercial ionizer that can replicate that feeling.

That sparkle is more than memory. It is sovereignty, law, and politics disguised as sunlight on water. The Great Lakes are not scenery. They are sovereignty in liquid form — and Canada risks sleepwalking away from them.

The Great Lakes were the first love of my life. Pieces of my heart and soul will always live on those shores, no matter where I am.

Those shores fed us too. We had the best pickerel in the world — pulled from Superior near the river mouths and windblown bays around Thunder Bay, then beer-battered and fried over a campfire. At night, eaten under the stars, it tasted like candy, crisp and sweet. By morning, in the fresh air, cold beer battered pickerel was somehow even sweeter in the morning air. That was Superior’s gift — food as unforgettable as the sunrise.

Those gifts — sunrises and suppers both — weren’t just freedom; they were my first lessons in how deeply water shapes a life. Only later did I realize that what felt like play and plenty was also politics — because to hold onto those shores, a country has to defend them.

This is the story of how a child’s lake became a continent’s vulnerability — and why Canadians must stop treating the Great Lakes as scenery.

Icebreakers and the Seasons

Growing up, our signs of changing seasons were universal — falling leaves, spring buds, the smell of woodsmoke in autumn. But on the North Shore we had one more: the icebreakers.

Every spring, just as winter seemed endless, we would watch for the ships beyond the breakwater, crunching their way into the harbour. Their arrival meant the ice rally races were done for another year, the elevators would soon be hiring their seasonal workers, and life on the shore was waking up again. For a child, the sight of an icebreaker’s bow carving through Superior’s frozen skin was the promise of warmth and renewal.

The First Signs of Trouble

Before the 1980s rumblings about climate change entered the mainstream, those of us who lived close to the lakes saw trouble.

One summer, after moving west, I returned with my children to Lake Mary Louise near Silver Islet at the tip of the Sibley Peninsula. As a child, I had a favourite spot: a massive fallen tree, hardened by years of sun and wind until its surface felt more like stone than wood, jutting into the lake. I would perch there for hours, toes dangling just above the water. What once felt eternal now looked fragile.

That year, the shoreline had receded so far that my perch hung over nothing but dry stones. The waterline had retreated nearly a foot.

The following summer, the first beach closures began — not just on inland lakes, but on Superior itself. We told ourselves it was a blip, an anomaly. It wasn’t.

For context: even at Superior’s warmest near-shore beaches — Chippewa Park in Thunder Bay, or Batchawana Bay near Sault Ste. Marie — the water seldom climbed above 68 °F (20 °C), and then only for a few precious weeks between late July and mid August. That was what locals considered “ideal swimming.” To southerners it would feel frigid, but for us it was perfect.

So when closures came, they weren’t caused by a gentle warming trend — they were sudden, sharp signals that something had shifted in the ecosystem.

I am old enough to remember when Superior’s beaches never closed — and young enough to still swim them with my grandchildren. That living memory is something the data alone can’t convey.

Science Catches Up

We now know that Lake Superior’s summer surface waters have warmed by more than 2.5 °C (4.5 °F) since 1979. That’s one of the fastest rates of warming in the world. Warmer water fuels algal blooms, disrupts food webs, and stresses cold-water fish species. The closures I witnessed in the early ’80s weren’t blips. They were foreshadowing.

And the science has only grown starker. This past winter, ice covered only 6% of the Great Lakes in January — one of the lowest levels ever recorded. Less ice means more evaporation, faster warming, and less oxygen for cold-water species. The Lakes are shifting before our eyes, not in some distant future.

Contamination, too, is no longer just local runoff. A 2024 study found toxic ‘forever chemicals’ — PFAS — not only in lake water, but in rainfall and air across the basin. Pollution now rides the wind. That makes the fight for clean water both harder and more urgent.

For me, that foreshadowing wasn’t abstract. It was the shock of bringing my children to the very spots I loved, only to find them diminished — the waterline lower, the beaches closed, the magic receding.

What I felt as a child on Superior’s shore, scientists later proved with data. And behind those numbers sits a labyrinth of treaties meant to hold the Lakes together.

Governing an Inland Ocean

The Great Lakes are not a single lake, but a system — five vast bodies of water feeding into the St. Lawrence Seaway. The Great Lakes contain 21 percent of the world’s surface freshwater — and a staggering 84 percent of North America’s. That sheer abundance is why they have always been coveted.

They are governed through a dense web of treaties and commissions:

The Boundary Waters Treaty (1909) established the principle of “no harm” and created the International Joint Commission (IJC).
The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (1972, updated 2012) committed both countries to protect the lakes’ physical, chemical, and biological integrity. The 2012 update added annexes on climate change, invasive species, and public engagement.
The Great Lakes–St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact (2008) prevents most water diversions outside the basin.

On paper, it is one of the most comprehensive freshwater governance regimes in the world. In practice, it is obscure, technical, and almost invisible to the public. Few citizens know what the IJC is, let alone how to hold it accountable.

I can tell you this: no one on my childhood street ever talked about an IJC or a Compact. We knew icebreakers, freighters, and fishing spots. The gap between the lived lake and the governed lake is enormous — and dangerous.

For Indigenous nations, whose treaties long predate the Boundary Waters Treaty, stewardship of the Lakes is not a policy line but a living responsibility. Their voices are too often sidelined in binational forums, even though their rights are recognized in both Canadian and American law.

Brewing Storms: Policy Cuts, Tensions, and a Thirsty Future

The greatest risk may not be ecological alone, but political.

In the United States, the agencies that monitor and protect the Lakes are under pressure. The Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL), part of NOAA, has reportedly lost more than a third of its staff since early 2025. Proposed federal budgets would cut hundreds of millions from clean water programs in the Great Lakes states, and the EPA’s budget itself has been targeted for reductions of up to 55%. Fewer buoys, fewer scientists, slower cleanups.

Cross-border diplomacy is fraying too. Canadian officials were excluded from a recent U.S. “Great Lakes Day,” raising eyebrows. Meanwhile, Washington has floated expanding the CUSMA/USMCA trade agreement to cover “adjacent” issues: critical minerals, defense procurement, even lumber. These aren’t just trade tweaks — they show how shared stewardship is being eroded by bigger geopolitical agendas.

And looming in the background is the U.S. Southwest’s megadrought. As aquifers collapse and climate pressures mount, talk of ‘freshwater security’ grows louder. To American strategists, the Great Lakes are impossible to ignore. They don’t just hold 21 percent of the world’s surface freshwater — they hold 84 percent of North America’s. Remember that number. It explains why every policy cut, every shoreline sale, every exception carved into a treaty matters. To America’s thirst, the Lakes are not scenery. They are a resource, waiting to be claimed.

Canada, for its part, has begun investing more in protection — $9.3 million this year for 26 freshwater projects under its Great Lakes Freshwater Ecosystem Initiative. Welcome steps, but still a fraction of what stewardship demands.

Each budget cut and treaty snub isn’t just bureaucracy. It is another loose brick in the wall that protects Canada’s sovereignty over its freshwater. When I read about staff cuts or treaty expansions, I don’t just see bureaucracy. I see buoys missing on a stormy night, warnings unheeded, and families like mine left guessing about the safety of the water we love.

When the Shoreline Becomes the Warning

Some communities are already living with that warning. Hamilton Harbour, the Detroit River, and the St. Louis River remain designated ‘Areas of Concern,’ their shorelines scarred by legacy pollution and slow cleanups.

That tension is real for families. A few years ago, my family rented a cottage on Lake Erie near Leamington. We noticed how many were for sale, some surprisingly cheap. Locals told us why: eroding shorelines and beaches closed by poor water quality.

Port Dover — one of Canada’s most famous southern beaches — now sees frequent closures too. Warm water draws crowds, but in sheltered inlets and near beaches where circulation is weaker, those warmer stretches more readily support bacterial growth and algal blooms.

If the U.S. were ever to push past treaty protections, it wouldn’t just be an international abstraction. It would show up in cottage sales, shuttered beach towns, and a sense of loss for communities who depend on the Lakes.

The Legal Walls — and What Happens if They Crack

If politics weaken the Lakes from above, law is supposed to hold from below. But legal walls can crack too.

Right now, a fortress of law stands between the Great Lakes and large-scale diversion. The 2008 Compact forbids most transfers outside the basin, with only narrow exceptions. The Boundary Waters Treaty (1909) and the IJC add another layer. And the Supreme Court’s cap on the Chicago diversion still shows how sensitive the system is — one pipeline lowers Lakes Michigan and Huron by about six centimetres.

More recently, in 2016, Waukesha, Wisconsin became the first city outside the Great Lakes basin to win permission to divert water under the Compact. The fight was bruising, and it showed how quickly ‘exceptions’ can become precedents.

And precedent doesn’t just come in the form of diversions. In 2025, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers moved to fast-track permits for Enbridge’s Line 5 tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac, citing an energy emergency. It was a blunt reminder that when political urgency collides with environmental review, even long-standing safeguards can be swept aside.

And it isn’t just water diversions that threaten the Lakes. Ontario’s own shoreline politics are setting dangerous precedents. At Wasaga Beach, public waterfront lands — long a shared commons — are being sold off and redeveloped, squeezing out both public access and the dune ecosystems that act as natural barriers protecting the Great Lakes. This trend is spreading: treating shoreline as real estate rather than a trust erodes not just community space, but the ecological buffers the lakes depend on.

But laws are only as strong as the will to enforce them. Little wonder the U.S. president muses about Canada becoming the 51st state. Were that ever the case, the Great Lakes would be wide open for American use — no pesky treaties, no political hurdles. The quip may sound casual, but it reveals a truth that keeps many Canadians awake at night: sovereignty is the only shield we have, and once it’s gone, no treaty will save us. Picture a future where tankers load not grain but freshwater, bound for drought-stricken ports. Where Superior’s levels fall as pipelines carve southward. Where shoreline communities don’t just lose beaches — they lose the right to decide who drinks their water.

The Great Lakes also act as one of North America’s great climate regulators — cooling the continent in summer, softening winters, and feeding rainfall across the basin. When lake levels fall or waters warm, that buffer weakens. The result is more extreme heat waves, sharper droughts, and disrupted precipitation patterns that ripple into agriculture, energy, and trade. In other words: what happens to the Lakes doesn’t stay in the basin — it destabilizes far beyond.

For those of us who grew up with Superior as our compass, it’s a chilling thought — that the same waters that taught us joy could one day be parceled off by politics.

If the U.S. redefined “water security” as justification for new diversions, the impacts would ripple outward: lower lake levels, disrupted fish spawning, intensified algal blooms, reduced hydropower at Niagara, fractured trust with Indigenous nations, and political fallout between Ottawa and Washington.

Across the world, from the parched aquifers of the Middle East to India’s shrinking groundwater reserves, freshwater scarcity is reshaping politics. The Great Lakes are not immune. They are simply one of the last, largest reservoirs still intact.

If Canada cannot protect the largest freshwater system on Earth, how can it argue for stronger global climate accords? How can it credibly press others to safeguard the Amazon, the Congo, or the Mekong? The world is watching, even if Canadians are not. We treat the Lakes like wallpaper: always there, silently framing our lives. But wallpaper can peel — and once gone, it’s hard to put back.

If Canadians fail to see the Lakes as sovereignty, they will be treated as scenery — and scenery is always up for sale.

What to Watch For — And What We Can Do

The plight of the Great Lakes should not be ignored. Yet expecting it to command attention, with so many other Canada–U.S. tensions on the table, would be naïve. Doubly so given how little the public knows. To most people, the Lakes are simply there — immense, eternal, beyond harm. But in an era where freshwater is as valuable as diamonds, that perception is dangerous.

Part of the danger is psychological. Canadians have always assumed that geography itself is our shield — that an inland ocean could never be at risk. But abundance isn’t security. It can breed complacency. That complacency is Canada’s soft underbelly.

Watch for:

Cuts to monitoring capacity — when labs and buoys vanish, we’re flying blind.
Areas of Concern — cleanup sites like Hamilton Harbour and the Detroit River are litmus tests for political will.
Climate indicators — less ice, more algae, falling levels.
Political rhetoric — when freshwater is cast as “national security,” treaty walls grow shaky.
Treaty visibility — if citizens don’t know about the IJC or GLWQA, they can’t defend them.

What can we do? Pay attention. Support NGOs and communities watchdogging the lakes. Pressure governments to fund science, not cut it. Share stories — the kind that remind us these aren’t just “resources,” but living waters.

Because the Great Lakes are not abstractions. They are sunrises that sparkle like diamonds, winters marked by the thunder of icebreakers, childhoods shaped by freedom and water.

“Imagine telling a grandchild that the water they swim in, or the fish they catch, isn’t really Canada’s anymore — that it’s a shared asset parceled out by someone else. That’s the real implication of sleepwalking past sovereignty.”

Talk about the Lakes at your dinner table. Ask your kids what they notice when they swim or fish on great lakes or small. These conversations, small as they seem, are the front line of awareness. The more we speak of the Lakes as ours, the harder it is for anyone to treat them as expendable.

Abundance is not security. It is a responsibility. And whether that responsibility is honoured or squandered will decide what kind of lakes — and what kind of Canada — our grandchildren inherit. Once, the Great Lakes gave us pickerel that tasted like candy and sunrises that felt eternal. What we pass on now depends on whether we treat those gifts as scenery — or as sovereignty. A search engine can tell you Superior is the world’s largest freshwater lake. What it cannot tell you is how it feels to lose her. That is the risk we are running.

For readers who want to follow Great Lakes issues more closely, here are accessible, regularly updated sources, a mix of binational bodies, NGOs, and journalism outlets:

The Great Lakes: Canada’s Sleeping Sovereignty Crisis

Brewing Storms: Cuts, Tensions, Thirst

By Leni Spooner

Childhood by the Shore

The Great Lakes were the first love of my life. Pieces of my heart and soul will always live on those shores, no matter where I am.

Those shores fed us too. We had the best pickerel in the world — pulled from Superior near the river mouths and windblown bays around Thunder Bay, then beer-battered and fried over a campfire. At night, eaten under the stars, it tasted like candy, crisp and sweet. By morning, in the fresh air, cold beer battered pickerel was cold, beer-battered pickerel was somehow even sweeter in the morning air. That was Superior’s gift — food as unforgettable as the sunrise.

This is the story of how a child’s lake became a continent’s vulnerability — and why Canadians must stop treating the Great Lakes as scenery.

Icebreakers and the Seasons

Growing up, our signs of changing seasons were universal — falling leaves, spring buds, the smell of woodsmoke in autumn. But on the North Shore we had one more: the icebreakers.

The First Signs of Trouble

Before the 1980s rumblings about climate change entered the mainstream, those of us who lived close to the lakes saw trouble.

That year, the shoreline had receded so far that my perch hung over nothing but dry stones. The waterline had retreated nearly a foot.

The following summer, the first beach closures began — not just on inland lakes, but on Superior itself. We told ourselves it was a blip, an anomaly. It wasn’t.

So when closures came, they weren’t caused by a gentle warming trend — they were sudden, sharp signals that something had shifted in the ecosystem.

I am old enough to remember when Superior’s beaches never closed — and young enough to still swim them with my grandchildren. That living memory is something the data alone can’t convey.

Science Catches Up

What I felt as a child on Superior’s shore, scientists later proved with data. And behind those numbers sits a labyrinth of treaties meant to hold the Lakes together.

Governing an Inland Ocean

They are governed through a dense web of treaties and commissions:

The Boundary Waters Treaty (1909) established the principle of “no harm” and created the International Joint Commission (IJC).
The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (1972, updated 2012) committed both countries to protect the lakes’ physical, chemical, and biological integrity. The 2012 update added annexes on climate change, invasive species, and public engagement.
The Great Lakes–St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact (2008) prevents most water diversions outside the basin.

Brewing Storms: Policy Cuts, Tensions, and a Thirsty Future

The greatest risk may not be ecological alone, but political.

When the Shoreline Becomes the Warning

The Legal Walls — and What Happens if They Crack

If politics weaken the Lakes from above, law is supposed to hold from below. But legal walls can crack too.

For those of us who grew up with Superior as our compass, it’s a chilling thought — that the same waters that taught us joy could one day be parceled off by politics.

If Canadians fail to see the Lakes as sovereignty, they will be treated as scenery — and scenery is always up for sale.

What to Watch For — And What We Can Do

Watch for:

Cuts to monitoring capacity — when labs and buoys vanish, we’re flying blind.
Areas of Concern — cleanup sites like Hamilton Harbour and the Detroit River are litmus tests for political will.
Climate indicators — less ice, more algae, falling levels.
Political rhetoric — when freshwater is cast as “national security,” treaty walls grow shaky.
Treaty visibility — if citizens don’t know about the IJC or GLWQA, they can’t defend them.

Because the Great Lakes are not abstractions. They are sunrises that sparkle like diamonds, winters marked by the thunder of icebreakers, childhoods shaped by freedom and water.

For readers who want to follow Great Lakes issues more closely, here are accessible, regularly updated sources, a mix of binational bodies, NGOs, and journalism outlets:

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About the Author

Leni Spooner is a Canadian writer, researcher, and civic storyteller. She is the founder of Between the Lines | Kitchen Table Politics, a longform publication exploring how policy, economics, food systems, and everyday life intersect. Her work blends historical context with present-day analysis, helping readers see the deeper patterns that shape Canada’s choices — and the lives built around them.

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Childhood by the Shore

Icebreakers and the Seasons

The First Signs of Trouble

Science Catches Up

Governing an Inland Ocean

Brewing Storms: Policy Cuts, Tensions, and a Thirsty Future

When the Shoreline Becomes the Warning

The Legal Walls — and What Happens if They Crack

What to Watch For — And What We Can Do

The Great Lakes: Canada’s Sleeping Sovereignty Crisis

Childhood by the Shore

Icebreakers and the Seasons

The First Signs of Trouble

Science Catches Up

Governing an Inland Ocean

Brewing Storms: Policy Cuts, Tensions, and a Thirsty Future

When the Shoreline Becomes the Warning

The Legal Walls — and What Happens if They Crack

What to Watch For — And What We Can Do

About the Author

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