Gwen et al.:
Being from Maryland, I tend to think of "our" Bay, the Chesapeake, when I hear Gord's nautical songs. Our estuary is not so fearsome as the northern waters, though. MD has a lot of variety in a small area--we have mountains (near West Va.), farmland, etc.--but the Bay dominates, and we tend to be very proprietary about it (which really POs the Virginians).
Your mention of how Ontario Canadians feel about trying to take care of the great bodies of water around them reminds me of the (seemingly doomed) efforts that are ongoing to try to "Save the Bay." There are many small victories, but the war probably will be lost. The main factor is farm runoff (nitrogen fertilizer)--even the tremendous pollution from development, etc., on the shores of the Bay can't hold a candle to that (the bulk of it comes from the Susquehanna River, which flows through Pennsylvania). And these things won't change in time to save the Bay's ecosystem. It probably will be "dead," at least as far as shellfish and other such indicators go, sometime (soon) in this new century.
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