Report on a Meeting about Trout Streams in Canagagigue Creek
Between Dan Kennaley (municipal official) and Henry Regier (eco-activist) ,
Woolwich Municipal Council Building, 15 June 2010.
The purpose of our meeting was:
- to review the recent status of tributaries to Canagagigue Creek (CC) that still seem to have water purity and flows generally acceptable by native brook trout; and
- to begin consideration about whether there may be a role for Woolwich Municipality to encourage responsible agencies and citizen groups to focus strong efforts to preserve reaches of trout-stream tributaries that are still quite natural and to rehabilitate some reaches where corrective measures might be inexpensive.
We started by noting that the Woolwich Reservoir and the CC’s mainstem, downstream from the Reservoir and the town of Elmira were not part of this meeting’s agenda. But Henry noted, in passing, that GRCA may have plans to dredge contaminated sediments out of the Reservoir. Also, the mainstem downstream from Elmira was already degraded 70 years ago because of inflow of primary sewage, wastes from a creamery, drainage of a garbage dump within the town, poor farming practices, etc. Starting about 1940, various industries then settled in Elmira and combined to cause intense harm to the aquifers, the mainstem, air quality, etc. Gradually over the past half century the most intense abuses have been remediated, in part. Currently the natural ecological association of the mainstem is recovering gradually and a scientific narrative of such partial improvements could provide reason for Elmirans to be proud of what has been achieved so far. But to declare victory and depart the field now would be premature by some decades. Alan Marshall is still finding secret hotspots of contaminants.
We, Dan and Henry, reviewed the geology of the CC basin and noted that much of the CC catchment area is interlaced with old glacial spillways that are sandy. Each of these spillways has complex layering and internal drainage.
About 10 years ago Henry Regier sat down with Ken Reger, a life-long naturalist of the CC basin, to map locations of springs that Ken recalled from his decades of mink trapping and trout fishing. Locations of those springs were entered onto a map that was included in a CC watershed planning report that GRCA produced about a decade ago. (Henry couldn’t find his copy of that report but did have a copy of the map mentioned above.)
Comparing the maps of spring locations and of major tributaries of the CC it was apparent to us that the springs known to Ken Reger were generally located in old glacial spillways in three of the five subwatersheds (see below).
Somewhat simplistically, the whole CC catchment basin can be divided into five tributary basins draining into the mainstem that flows southeastward from Floradale. These tributary basins are, from upstream to the northwest to downstream to the southeast:
- Northwest branch of the CC which starts at Goldstone; much of this tributary lies on a till plain on which streams show very low if any flow during a prolonged drought of hot weather; Ken recalled no springs in this tributary; it meanders southward to end in Floradale.
- Northeast branch of the CC which starts a few km west of Alma; the University of Guelph has an aquaculture research station that exploits massive springs from the large moraine at this location; Ken Reger recalls large springs in this tributary; it always has sizeable flow and runs southwestward to end in Floradale.
- West branch sometimes called Larch, Lorch or Schwindt Creek that starts near Wallenstein, Yatton and Gotham; the streams that start near Yatton and Gotham dry out in dry, hot summers; Ken Reger recalls springs in the southerly part of this tributary that starts near Wallenstein; a reach flows through the property of the ‘gun club’ where it is quite natural; another part detours into the golf course; it flows through Victoria Park at the north edge of Elmira and joins the mainstem near Arthur Street South.
- East branch sometimes called Swamp Creek; it starts south of Elora and flows, always with sizeable flow, almost due southward to join the mainstem near where Northfield drive crosses the mainstem below Elmira; Ken Reger recalls numerous springs in this tributary.
- South branch which lies southwestward of Elmira; it gets warm and dries out in a hot and dry summer; but a small tributary in the south of Elmira is fed by the outfall of cold water from a pump-and-treat facility across Arthur Street from the Crossroads Restaurant; that facility does not operate continuously so that when it closes down the temperature of the lower part of this south branch presumably rises abruptly; this tributary parallels the railway tracks for about a km before flowing into the CC mainstem just below the sewage treatment outfall.


In most of the summers since 1997 Henry has watched the weather to find a couple of particularly hot days during an extended dry spell. In some years he chose two occasions with those weather characteristics. On such days he conducted sampling surveys from late morning until early evening of selected locations on the many streams within the CC watershed. Altogether some 98 stations were visited at one time or another. After several years the data could be used to reduce the number of stations visited to those that were likely to have stream flows even on the hottest, driest days of a year. Data collected at each visit to a stream station included water temperature, approximate water flow, water quality as apparent visually and some ecological information. In early years the air temperature was obtained from government meteorological station near Elora and this information was supplemented by direct measurement during a survey in later years.

From research conducted elsewhere by Henry and his colleagues, it was shown that the kind of survey sketched above provided reasonably reliable information on maximum water temperature at a locale in a stream and information on other variables as listed above.

Dan and Henry reviewed summaries of survey information for several locations on each of three reaches of three tributaries to CC: the northeastern branch, the eastern branch and the western branch. These data show that these reaches had water temperatures, water flow, water quality and related ecological data like what one would expect in a trout stream. But there was a problem: the summer of 2006 was dry and hot and some stream temperatures exceeded 25 C during the sampling run. Whether these high temperatures persisted for more than a few hours and thus caused serious harm to any trout present isn’t known to Henry.

Scanning the data summaries also showed that the reach of the western branch (Larch, Lorch or Schwindt Creek) which deterred into the golf course showed anomalous behaviour on more than one occasion. The water temperature of the stream increased far more that about 2 C as one might expect over such a stream distance. Perhaps something bad happened to the stream occasionally in the golf course…

Henry is currently cleaning out his professional documents and asked Dan whether the data that Dan had seen were of sufficient interest that Henry should not throw them out but instead devote some effort into getting them in a condition in which they could be archived and used in the future.

Henry suggested that his surveys over the period 1998 to 2009 could provide baseline information about environmental husbandry in Woolwich Township since a stream’s ecological features provide a kind of ‘integrative indicator’ of environmental abuse. Secondly, air temperature and precipitation will likely change with climate warming, and such changes should eventually affect characteristics of streams of importance to trout, so that trout fishers could help to monitor local effects of climate warming.

Finally, there are good stories to be told about environmental stewardship in Woolwich Township, to complement bad stories of chemical hotspots that won’t be remediated for two or more decades to come.