Blame the climate crisis

The other day me and the Farm Manager took a tour up to Lion's Head, an exquisitely pretty town half-way up the Bruce. We come this way often, and it's always been on the back burner, at the back of what's left of my mind, that this would make a sweet retirement destination.

Mind you, the locals might take a dim view of a neighbour who has four or five parts vehicles decorating his property and likes to pee off the porch.

We were out by the marina and we both remarked on how much beach debris, including random driftwood and lots of those softly rounded (by millions of years of wave action) white rocks that make up the shoreline, had been thrown onto the marina parking lot.

They'd obviously been walloped by a fairly nasty nor'easter.

While we're on our walkabout, I hear, "hey, is that place still for sale?"

The FM was pointing to a place across the harbour that we'd noticed when we were in Lion's Head last summer. A little waterfront cottage perched on the edge of the cliff. It was on offer in the low four hundreds, which seemed like a bargain. We figured it would be snapped up in days.

But here we are a few months later, and the place is still for sale! We decided to go for a closer look.

There was nobody around. The view is spectacular and the house is cute beyond belief, all cobblestone and hardwood. But...

Those nor'easters have been beating the hell out of the waterfront. The last storm took the shoreline within thirty feet of the house. Another nasty storm or two, and your wee cottage on Georgian Bay is gonna be in Georgian Bay.

Thing is, the shorelines of his neighbours don't seem to be impacted. That's because the neighbour to the east had a sturdy stone and concrete seawall, and the neighbour to the west had a very robust steel seawall. Unfortunately for them, the erosion will now wash away their properties behind their seawalls when future storms hit, as they inevitably will.

Once that damage is done, the cottages further down the waterfront will be at risk.

Somebody needs to take action here, and soon!


My question; is this the result of the climate crisis, or is this the consequence of multiple poor decisions made by property owners?