Chow's Water (鄒之水)

The fight over who owns our water

I also predicted we'd be fighting over water access. More recently, due to a back injury, my own accessibility issues have given me a unique view into hidden and invisible barriers blocking us from that very access to water.

My wife and I chose to live and start a family by Lake Ontario in downtown Toronto, the largest city on the Great Lakes which hold one-fifth of the world's (85% of North America's) freshwater. Toronto is the capital of Ontario which is home to the world's largest freshwater lake. The word Ontario is an Indigenous Iroquoian and Huron word meaning "sparkling water", "beautiful lake", and "great lake".

In this sense Toronto is the freshwater capital of the world. For many of us, the nearby Ontario Place was our summer cottage until our provincial government decided to privatize it. Under cover of darkness on the night of Wednesday, October 2, 2024, they clearcut its forest, destroying 865 trees overnight to prepare the site for a private indoor waterpark and spa project by Therme Canada.

That left many of us searching for other water access in downtown Toronto. In my lab, as well as some of Toronto's best and most accurate testing labs, we began testing water from various waterfront locations and found some really good places to swim, but City bylaws forbid swimming anywhere other than designated lifeguarded beaches, none of which are located near downtown Toronto (e.g. walking distance from University of Toronto or the CN Tower).

Many other great cities around the world are becoming "Swimmable Cities", except for Toronto. For example, Paris, France, is now a place where people can legally swim in the Seine right next to the Eiffel Tower. This free swimming area has changing rooms, showers, and stunning views of the Eiffel Tower.

Many people come to HTO Beach to swim in front of Toronto's CN Tower, ignoring the "NO SWIMMING" signs:

Our waterfront has not only fallen to neglect, but deliberate actions are being taken to block public water access. I call these deliberately-constructed accessibility barriers "Blue Barriers".

A glaring lack of safety is one such barrier. The deteriorating condition of the safety ladders along the downtown waterfront makes it dangerous for anyone falling in from the shore, or from a vessel, as well as dangerous for paddlers and other recreational water-users in distress:

Safetyladders along LoveQuay, a popular swim spot next to National Yacht Club

For years we have been trying to get the City of Toronto to provide a safe waterfront but they've simply passed the buck, refusing to accept responsibility. The waterfront has become a liminal space, a bit like the Wild West, where no specific entity wants to claim responsible or accept liability. For many years we're approached all 3 levels of government as well as Waterfront Toronto, Toronto Port Authority, Harbourfront, and anyone else who would listen, but to no avail.

As a result of this inaction, grassroots groups have risen to the occasion as defenders of our waterfront. Organizations like Waterfront for All have joined the fight, and yacht clubs have installed their own safety ladders or maintained existing ones. Harbourfront also put safety ramps into the Peter Street Basin.

However, under the direction of Andrea Chow, Manager of Parks, City of Toronto, these vital safety ladders and ramps are being deliberately removed, actively endangering the public:

Andrea Chow
Thu, Jul 9, 1:19 PM
Good afternoon Steve,
[...]
The ramps and ladders that were installed at the Peter Street Basin without authorization have been removed 

Neither the Peter Street Basin, nor HTO are designated swimming or paddle areas. The City does not authorize swimming or paddling in these locations.
...
Should you wish to swim or paddle in open water in Toronto, we encourage you to
go to one of the City of Toronto’s ten designated swimming beaches. Each of
these locations is equipped with beach mats for increased accessibility.
...
Best regards,
...
Andrea Chow

Decriminalize swimming and non-motorized watercraft:

This brings us to a staggering contraction in City policy. The City has decriminalized drugs and provides safe supervised consumption sites for crack cocaine, fentanyl, and the like advertising them as:

"Supervised consumption sites and services Safe, clean space
for people to bring their own drugs to use, 24 hour services"

If the city provides infrastructure, funding, and safe spaces to support drug consumption, it defies logic to criminalize and dismantle the infrastructure that is actively keeping thousands of our citizens off drugs. Yet, if someone wants to transition from cocaine to cold-water swimming, the Chow administration will stand in their way. Providing the same infrastructural support or at the very least, safe, unimpeded access, to natural cold-water sites is a public health imperative.

We should not need to keep a constant watch for marine police boats while entering police-infested waters, as the Chow administration regards water use as illicit. Most notably, the Chow administration has been discouraging winter swimming, which, should simply be "swim at your own risk" as obviously no lifeguards are on duty in the winter time.

Safe-consumption sites for cold plunges (cold-water exposure) in downtown Toronto is a very reasonable ask.

Or how about leave them unsupervised for use at one's own risk? That's an even easier ask. Just stop hassling us for accessing our lake! Other cities like Kingston simply have signs stating "SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK" around the downtown core, at places like the Gord Edgar Downie Pier, a deep-water urban natural swimming pier that was inspired by, and designed by the same architect as Toronto's HTO Beach.

Kingston's deep-water urban natural swimming piers are labeled: "Unsupervised swimming. Swim at your own risk." and were modeled after Toronto's HTO Beach by the same architect.

The Chow Motor (鄒电机)

On Thu, Jul 9, 2026 at 2:36 PM Andrea Chow wrote:
    Hi Steve,
[...]
As to HTO Park, the use of non-motorized watercraft off the dock wall is not permitted subject to Parks by-law 608 for safety reasons.

There is accessible beach matting at all 10 Supervised Swimming Beaches in Toronto.

Moreover, the City has constructed barriers ostensibly to keep bicycles off the boardwalks, but they actually just keep mobility devices off the boardwalks while failing to stop bycycles:

I inquired to City of Toronto in 2023 about this, and Andrea Chow responded Oct. 14, 2025 "I will need to do some follow up regarding the boardwalk.". To this day, these Blue Barriers remain, and I have received no word on whether wheelchairs and mobility devices are allowed.

So the only accessible beach in Toronto in which a person can get a mobility device all the way to the water's edge is HTO Beach, where only motorboats are allowed, according to Andrea Chow.

The boardwalk actually hangs over the water, and is part of the same Ontario land registry parcel as the Inner Harbour. Therefore I doubt Chow's claim is valid. However, to humour her, and perhaps exercise my own sense of humour, I created the "Chow Motor" (#ChowMotor).

As a professor of electrical engineering who teaches electric motors, I have many small motors that come in boxes of 480. I simply installed one on my paddleboards to legally transform it into a "motorboat". The motor consumes about 0.0003 horsepower (5 volts at 0.05 amps) but very little of that power actually propels the boat. The propulsion is less than a millionth of a horspower, i.e. less than one microhorse, because there is no propeller. Moreover, the motor is seldom turned on. It is simply a "compliance motor" installed purely so that I can continue to access the lake at the only place where the lake is physically accessible to me:

The "Chow-motor" or "Compliance-motor" is a motor attached to a paddleboard so that it can be called a "motorboat". It need not actually run..

The fact that I have installed meaningless motors onto a HUMAN-POWERED water device in order to comply with the 'Chow rules', shows that the rules themselves are, in effect, meaningless. Why does the City of Toronto spend time and resources in 'enforcing' meaningless regulations, instead of encouraging its citizens to use and enjoy the waterfront?

My doctor also prescribed water-walking for spinal rehab, a treatment my chiropractor and occupational therapist also support. Yet the City of Toronto will not allow it in any of their pools.

Looking for alternatives, I discovered an outdoor pool that is part of Lake Ontario. It was covered in so much garbage that one could not even see the water. So we formed a volunteer Cleanup Crew and cleaned it up to the point where it was safe for swimming. We turned Peter Street Basin into Peter Street Pool, Toronto's downtown Lake Lido:
It was swamped with garbage. Now there are swimmers in this Toronto lake basin

It is now suitable for water-walking exercises for people with disabilities, for spinal rehab., etc. [2].

Perhaps our efforts are the exact reason the Chow administration removed the safety ladders and ramps, put up "NO SWIMMING" signs, and tried to prohibit "non-motorized watercraft".

We want safe access to clean water downtown where we live and work. We want Half-hour Cities where you can get anywhere on foot in 30 minutes or less. Let's put an end to urban sprawl and make our downtown waterfront clean, safe, and truly accessible.

Brad Bradford, the Toronto City Councillor for The Beaches, brought forward a motion to create safety zones, motorized watercraft ban and exclusion zones at local beaches like Woodbine and Cherry beaches to protect swimmers and paddlers from illegal jet ski activity. Brad's motion was accepted unanimously at Council.

It is time to put Breaking Blue Barriers on the Balletbox

Thanks to Jeff Archobold and Tyrone Moodly for many suggestions on this writing.