The Girl Who Saved the Water
In the beautiful waters of Little Whitefish Lake, lives a girl named Ruby.
Ruby is a ten year old girl who lives on the lake with her mom, dad , little sister and dog . She is 7 and has lived here for 5 years. She moved here from Mississauga and loves it. She goes to school at Lakefront Public School. She has a 7 year old sister named Alice and a 2 year old German Shepherd named Willow. Ruby loves the lake a lot. Some of her favourite things to do on the lake are paddle boarding , tubing and going swimming with her dog and sister. Ruby has lots of friends.
One Saturday evening, Ruby went out on the paddle board with Willow for a sunset paddle. As they were paddling on the lake, they saw a weird sign on the one property owned by the town. The sign read,“Garbage Dump”. Ruby knew there was a dump just 15 minutes away and thought that it was a weird sign to have on the lake. She paddled into shore and went home. When she was lying in bed, she could not stop thinking about the weird sign and started to
worry that they were going to start dumping garbage into the crystal clear lake. Eventually, she fell asleep.
The next day, Ruby had her two best friends Tessa and Ava over to hang out. They went tubing ,swimming and jumping off the floating dock. It was another fun day on the lake. On Monday, Ruby had school. When she got home, she was playing in the yard with Willow and Alice when all of a sudden, they heard what sounded like a digger. “That’s funny”, said Alice. It sounded like they were doing some construction on the lake. Then the sound stopped and Alice went in to do homework. Ruby decided to investigate. She went paddle boarding to see what was happening. She sat on her paddle board and paddled slowly so she would not be noticed. She was behind an old dead tree and she was listening to a conversation. Ruby heard some construction workers say that they would get the garbage and have a little hidden slide that they would put the garbage into and it would slide the garbage into the lake. Ruby knew it was against the law to do that. She quietly turned around and paddled back home.
As she was sitting on the dock, Ruby was not sure if she should tell her parents. They probably would not believe the town would do something like that. The next day she got to school early to meet her friends. Ruby told her friends the horrible information that she had overheard. Tessa, her best friend said they should take a video of the construction workers saying that stuff and then start a protest to fight against it. Ruby liked the idea except that her parents would find out she was spying on the workers.
Later that afternoon, Ruby could not stop thinking about the lake and the garbage and decided that saving the lake was worth the risk of getting in trouble. She decided to go that evening to take a video of the workers talking about their horrible plot. When Ruby was taking the video, all of a sudden she sneezed. One of the construction workers heard her and looked in Ruby’s direction. Just in time, she hid behind a tree. Suddenly a turtle head popped out of the water. “Oh, it is just a turtle”, said the worker.
When she was in bed that night, she came up with a new plan. After school the next day, Ruby had Tessa and Ava over. She showed them the
video and the plan. They worked for hours on posters and things to start a protest.
Ruby was excited because tomorrow was the day to tell the town the truth about the city’s plot. When Ruby woke up, she had breakfast, got dressed and told her parents to meet her at Waterfront Park at 11:00 am and for them to bring everyone they knew. Ruby had a trailer for her paddle board which she filled with signs. She met Tessa and Ava at the park .They then got the signs and started protesting. They said dumping plastic into water is wrong . At 11:00am, a bunch of people started to show up. The girls showed the video of the construction workers to every person that showed up. Then the mayor of the town arrived and asked,“What is everyone doing here?” An older woman said,“These girls showed us the horrible thing that you are doing!” “What do you mean?” asked the Mayor. The girls showed him the video. “Well, how do you know it is real?” asked the mayor. “It is real, and I have proof. I have a video of Miss Ruby doing that,”said a tiny old woman with grey hair, who was wearing a
purple dress and pink glasses. “I can show you the video,”said the older woman. The mayor said,“Show me the video.”
“Okay”, said the lady. She showed the mayor a video of Ruby sitting on her paddleboard with a phone, with the construction workers in the background. The woman explained that she was videotaping turtles from her dock when she saw Ruby sneaking around. The mayor looked very embarrassed and finally said,“Well fine. I admit that we were doing something wrong. I will stop construction for the dump.”
Ruby, Tessa and Ava’s parents were so proud of the girls that they went and got ice cream to celebrate. Tessa suggested that the site get turned into a new ice cream shop. They all laughed and went back to Ruby’s house to enjoy the beautiful, clean waters of Little Whitefish Lake.
By Alise, gr. 5, KHPS, Guelph, ON