Caleigh Dunfield and her parents' pup Wynn have been acting as environmental stewards through the pandemic.
A Saint Andrews resident used their morning walks during the pandemic to help clean up thousands of pieces of litter along the seaside community.
Caleigh Dunfield began walking the beaches of Saint Andrews in order to help set a morning routine. When her parents brought home their new puppy Wynn it gave her another reason to commit to the ritual.
However, it wasn’t until the COVID-19 pandemic that she realized how she and Wynn could help beautify the natural habitat she’d grown up in.
Shortly after the pandemic was announced, Dunfield began to notice a neighbour who walked the beach every morning with a bag to collect litter.
Eventually, the neighbours stopped for a socially-distanced chat, at which point Dunfield realized she too should be contributing to the cleanup effort.
“It should be the small price we pay to walk (through the community) every morning,” said Dunfield.
At the end of the summer, Dunfield counted all the lobster bands she had picked up. Her final tally was 4,300 lobster bands.
Despite the volume, she says she doesn’t blame the lobster industry for the piles of litter. She says for every lobster band she picked up she also found at least one piece of regular garbage.
“It’s not about (one industry), it’s about the choices we’re all making,” Dunfield said. “I’m just as guilty of making choices that aren’t as environmentally conscious as they should be.”
Dunfield works as a guidance counselor for the Anglophone School District-South with mental health and addiction. She says by focusing her days around these morning walks, they became an important source of comfort at a time when the world felt overwhelming.
“Being able to connect to your community and taking care of your mental health is so important,” Dunfield said. “Mental health is a spectrum. Sometimes we’re in excellent mental health, and sometimes our mental health is not in a great space.”
Luckily for Dunfield, living in Saint Andrews provides plenty of opportunity to enjoy her natural environment, and she intends to continue caring for it.
“We live in this beautiful, kind of idyllic little town, and we can all be doing more to take care of it. In this moment in time, when there is so much going on, and it’s so overwhelming, if we want to find a focus to make a positive change we can do that in our own natural habitat.”
