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- by Anne Finlay-Stewart, Editor
"Did you know: if you feel thirsty, you are already about 2% dehydrated? Don't wait until you are thirsty before drinking fluids."
Such was the advice yesterday from one of our health and wellness contriubutors, PSW Barbara Fletcher. She goes on to recommend we check on our elderly relatives, friends and neighbours because the older one gets, the less one tends to drink, and is therefore more susceptible to dehydration. Barbara shared this link about heat exhaustion and heat stroke.
Today Environment Canada hss issued a Heat Warning for Owen Sound. According to the City's website, there are several precautions you should take, including "drinking lots of water, taking cool showers or baths to cool down, and staying in air-conditioned places".
There are provincial guidelines for a minimum temperature at which rental accomodation can be kept, but no maximum temperature. Air conditioning is not a right, and second, third and higher storey apartments can be well over 40 degrees (104F) in this weather.
For our neighbours with "no fixed address" there are more problems on a hot Sunday. Safe n' Sound is not open today, according to their Facebook page. It is not funded by any level of government to deal with today's Heat Warning.
Of the four air-conditioned city facilities, only one is open on Sunday - the Julie McArthur Regional Recreation Centre/YMCA Shared Corridor until 4 p.m. It is also the only one of the five water refill stations open on Sunday. According to the city website, the Bayshore, Public Library and our publicly owned art gallery are all closed, and they would all require a reusable cup or bottle.
Public outdoor water fountains were mostly turned off before Covid, and Public Health concerns (about Legionella, not dehydration and heat stroke) kept drinking fountains out of the approved re-design for public parks like the yet-to-be-renamed park at 8th Street East and 4th Ave.
This is from the 2021 Owen Sound Corporate Climate Change Adaptation Plan, funded in part by te Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the Government of Canada.
Those who have access to fluids - we know that some church volunteers and poverty activist Ray Botten have been giving out bottled water downtown on hot days - will need washrooms. Those at Kelso Beach at Nawash Park and Harrison Park and the east and west side boat launches are open until 10 p.m., and porta-potties on the harbour wall and at the mill dam are available 24/7. Downtown, the police station has the only available public washroom on Sunday.
There are no cool showers available to our street-involved neighbours today as Safe n' Sound is closed, but free swimming is offered at Harrison Park Pool from 11-12 if there is no thunderstorm. Of course the bay is free all the time, with accessibility at the Bayshore, Kelso Beach at Nawash Park, and in several spots along the north-western shoreline.
The Kelso Beach splashpad is open from 9 am to dusk.
We can expect many many more extreme heat days, and we should assume that dealing with them is part of Owen Sound's Corporate Climate Change Adaptation Plan and Community Safety and Well-Being Plan
If you are looking for me today, I will be in the (cool) Owen Sound Hub/Community Incubator office at 279 10th St E, reading those plans. The door and the washroom will be open 10 until 5, and cold water will be available by the glass.
