Swimmin with Sheila

SHEILA COPPS SHOWS OFF HER MUSSELS

Copps with kids

copyright 1999 Mark Bellis
Sheila Copps, despite being batty, is a very good politician from a political dynasty in Hamilton, a big industrial town near Toronto on Lake Ontario. The Star did not run the part about the ax or holding her head underwater, despite my appeal.

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Hamilton, July 16, 1994 - The Deputy Prime Minister donned snorkel and fins and plunged into the filthy waters of Hamilton Harbour to pick up trash as part of a clean-up program sponsored by local scuba clubs.
"They wanted me to swim in Burlington." said Deputy Prime Minister Copps, who is also Minister of the Environment, as she bobbed up clutching a zebra mussel encrusted can, the only thing she could

Copps with can.
I was told by the dive crew
that they'd found it and given it to Copps.

 find in the murky brown water on the end of Pier 4 in Hamilton. Burlington had clearer water but is outside of Copps' riding in East Hamilton. "I'd have gotten in shit if I dove out there - looks like I'm in shit now!" she said refering to the brownish water swirling around her. Copps later used the mussel-clad can to illustrate the problems caused to the environment by the Zebra mussel invasion. "Twenty years ago they weren't in Lake Ontario." Copps is not a certified diver, but took a crash course to familiarize herself with the equipment, and was accompanied by Doug Brignall, an experieced instructor. She remained submerged for about 10 minutes, combing the bottom in water with only a few feet of visibility.
Copps "wanted to make a statement about what we can do" to clean up the environment, she said before the dive. As she was swimming out, Ms. Copps looked back and noticed that the event was being picketed "Protestors! If you don't do anything with you life, no one will criticize you." she said. Copps was quoted earlier as saying she would like to swim in Hamilton Harbour because her mother once swam there.
Copps told some children she was swimming with after her dive that she would have brought her daughter but her mother Geraldine did not want her photographed by the media. She then played some games with the children, including one to see who could hold their head underwater the longest, which Copps won, and later told them an anecdote about splitting her own head open with an axe when she was a child in an effort to escape from a garage in which she had been confined by her sister. [I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP - BELLIS].

Possibly a submerged deputy prime minister, or the Loch Ness monster. It was really impossible to see more than a few feet so I'm suprised even the dive team could have found the can.

Note added in 1999 Copps' got the kids to sit around in shallow water in a circle near the beach and then got them to duck their head in the dank water, saying she always won at this when she was young. One little girl in front of me went into a dead man's float after about 30 seconds, and with the biggest headlines of my journalistic career - "DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER DROWNS TOT IN FRONT OF CAMERAS" - dissolving in my mind I pulled her head back up. She was fine. The clean-up dive was sponsored by the Ontario Underwater Council, an association of scuba clubs, and involved hundreds of divers from across Ontario collecting underwater trash around Hamilton.
Copyright 1994, 1996, 2009 Mark Bellis