December, 2022

This holiday season,

show your love for Ontario's lakes & waterways!

Do your family's holiday traditions include celebrations at your cottage or waterfront home? Whether you get to spend some of the last days of 2022 at the water’s edge—or only dream of being there—FOCA will be working year-round to protect Ontario waterways and the lake communities that cherish them.

We need your help to do that.

Before the end of December,

give a special gift to FOCA

to continue our work

on behalf of healthy waterfronts.

Yes, I want to help!

FOCA is a non-profit environmental organization not a charity, so you won’t receive a charitable receipt but you will make a difference supporting FOCA’s year-round work on water quality, invasive species, and educating cottagers about healthy and naturalized shorelines, safe boating, noise and light pollution, and much more.

Together, let's protect healthy lands, lakes and rivers.

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"Here's my cottage story..."

At a very young age, while vacationing at a family rental cottage I discovered my first real passion: fishing. After several years of camping, my wife Diane and I decided to buy a cottage, settling on beautiful Otter Lake. Otter is water-access, and is connected to Lake Weslemkoon, where the most you’ll hear in the evening is the sound of frogs and loons.

Our two grandchildren were soon beginning their own cottage experience as I once did: learning to fish!

A great day on the lake

With my love of the outdoors, I spend hours exploring the bush behind our property or walking the trails maintained by Lake Weslemkoon Conservation Association (LWCA), and—of course—fishing for bass and lake trout. We have one of the only self-reproducing native lake trout populations in Ontario.

By 2001 I had joined the Board of Directors of LWCA, eventually retiring in 2013 as Past President. During my tenure we focused on a variety of initiatives around water quality, including dissolved oxygen monitoring, and participating in FOCA’s Lake Partner Program, as well as fish surveying by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry.

I support FOCA because its beliefs parallel my own, and it provides much greater reach.

Our lakes face over-development, algal blooms, invasive species and depleted fisheries. That's not my idea of a great lake experience for my grandkids and their kids after them.

FOCA's many members are protecting water quality through their ongoing stewardship of our waterways.

And that’s why FOCA matters.

~Terry Beettam, FOCA Board Director since 2017

Diane and Leo on the dock

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Make your gift:

Online
e-transfer to accounts@foca.on.ca (include your name and email so we can thank you for your gift!)
cheque payable to "The Federation of Ontario Cottagers' Associations Inc." sent to our mailing address, below
call us at 705-749-3622

Make a gift online now

Thank you for your support!

Happiest holidays to you and your family,

Terry Rees, Executive Director, Federation of Ontario Cottagers' Associations

#201 - 159 King Street, Peterborough, ON K9J 2R8

info@foca.on.ca 705-749-3622

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For 60 years, FOCA has been dedicated to protecting water quality. We are the voice of those who love the waterfront to ensure policy and practice support a thriving, sustainable future for Ontario’s shorelines and those who love making family memories there.

Your support matters!