Welcome to New Communications Committee Member, Andrea Matrosovs

By Carl Michener

As the daughter of two Ontario College of Art and Design graduates, it’s no wonder that Andrea has an artistic bent. A few years ago, she tried basketweaving, blacksmithing and dry stone walling as part of a 50-point bucket list composed on her 50th birthday. She loved all three, but basketmaking is what stuck. You can find some of her work at www.BlueMountainBaskets.com

Andrea lives up on the Escarpment in The Blue Mountains on a smallholding where she cultivates willow, dogwood, lavender and heirloom apples.

She teaches at Niagara College in Welland on a regular basis and her husband works in St. Catherines, so the couple often commutes between home and Niagara-on-the-Lake.

Andrea is active in the community and helps with her son’s IT business in Collingwood, which has given her a good grounding for her new position (as if she needed one!) as website administrator with the Watershed Trust’s Communications Committee. She and the rest of the Committee are currently engaged in bringing our new website to life.

Cognizant of the rapid change that has overtaken the Collingwood / Blue Mountains environment, Andrea felt that working with the Watershed Trust would help to make a difference. “I feel a strong connection to the land and the water and feel the need to protect our local natural capital. So I want to keep the Blue Mountains Sustainable Path strategy (a Blue Mountain’s planning document) at the forefront of everything we do here for our communities in harmony with the environment. It’s a triple bottom line: we can’t grow economically at the risk of losing social or environmental sustainability—we must cultivate all three carefully.”

Keep an eye out for our new website at www.WatershedTrust.ca It’s coming soon!