A growing habit at Ontario Parks campsites is frustrating longtime visitors: people stuffing their rubbish into the fire pit before driving home. One camper at Bon Echo Provincial Park, south of Algonquin, found a pit packed with plastic sandwich containers, water bottles, LCBO boxes, half-eaten McDonald's burgers, firework tubes, wrappers, cigarette butts and the roached ends of cannabis joints. Not paper towels that could burn off — an actual garbage dump in a spot meant for a campfire.
He reckons the problem has been climbing for a couple of years, both in front-country campgrounds and the backcountry. Rather than leaving it for staff, he gloved up, bagged the mess and walked it to a dumpster — a bear-proof vault just 20 seconds from his site. The distance matters: most people trashing their fire pits pass a bin on the way out anyway.
When he posted a video of the clean-up online, it racked up over 75,000 views and 280 comments in a single day, most of them furious. Clearly plenty of campers care — the question is what actually changes behaviour.
Enforcement is tricky. Retired wardens point out that under Ontario's Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Act, 2006, the minimum fine for leaving litter is just $125, and issuing one usually means catching someone in the act or getting multiple witnesses. Ideas floating around include much bigger fines tied to the booking, banning repeat offenders, adding a cleaning deposit to reservations, or patrolling campgrounds more heavily. The other route is education — some veterans still remember Crickets Make Me Nervous, a camping etiquette film made for Ontario Parks by Lloyd Walton in the 1970s and shown at park amphitheatres. Nothing like it has been made since.
If you're camping in Ontario this year, the takeaway is simple: pack out everything, use the dumpsters (they're close), and if you arrive to a trashed fire pit, report it — staff will clean it — but know that doing it yourself and flagging it publicly is what's putting pressure on parks to act.
