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COMMENTARY: Cruise ships are here – And they’re seeing our garbage first

We know the fixes. We just need to practise them more widely – and more diligently.

Spring in the Maritimes brings budding trees, longer days and the annual unveiling of our shame. As the snow recedes along our highways, so emerges a disgraceful ribbon of garbage: coffee cups, fast-food bags, liquor bottles, beer cans and thousands of cigarette butts frozen then freed. It’s as if winter was hiding a secret we didn’t want visitors to see.

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But here’s the problem: they see it anyway. And cruise ship season has begun. The tourists are already here.

What visitors notice (and photograph)

Visitors are arriving by plane, by ferry, and by the thousands on cruise ships docking in Halifax, Saint John, Charlottetown and Sydney. They’re drawn by our coastlines, seafood and charm. But they’re also driving our roads, stopping at our look-offs, walking our downtown sidewalks. And what they’re quietly photographing is the litter. The same Tim Hortons cup rolling off the rocks in Peggy’s Cove. The same chip bag snagged on a wild rose bush along the Cabot Trail. The same cigarette butt floating in a Charlottetown puddle.

We should be mortified. Instead, we shrug.

Reckless and selfish – the window toss

Let me tell you what I personally saw not long ago. A man, parked in front of an entrance to the Mic Mac Mall in Dartmouth, opened his sunroof and tossed an entire bag of McDonald’s waste – wrappers, cups, napkins, half-eaten fries – out the open sunroof of his car in full view of myself and others. Then he drove away.

Just this week, a driver in front of us on the Circumferential highway threw a shredded piece of paper out his car window – the scraps landing on our windshield. A news report also this week pointed out that discarded bags of garbage and old........

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