More About the GBA

The Georgian Bay Association is an umbrella group of 21 cottage associations, representing over 4,000 families along the eastern and northern shores of Georgian Bay. Formed in 1916, our mandate to act as stewards of the fragile and finite water and land resources of the Bay has not changed over almost 100 years.

The members of the Board of Directors for the GBA work on a variety of committees to fulfill that mandate. Those committees include Water, Fisheries, Lands and Forests, Boating, Government Relations and Communications as well as internal Governance. The work is wide-ranging, everything from helping cottage associations establish water quality testing programs to monitoring municipal planning issues, giving input to government on boating regulations and fisheries issues and lobbying the most senior levels of government about serious concerns that threaten the unique ecology of Georgian Bay.

The role of the GBA and the scope of its work changed significantly in the 1990s as government services were eliminated or downloaded to already over-stretched lower levels of government. As the only organization focused solely on lobbying governments about the specific and distinct concerns of Georgian Bay, the GBA became of necessity a vigilant watchdog of policies affecting the Bay at all levels of government: municipal, provincial, federal and international. This website has more specific information about each of the GBA committee’s activities.

The GBA is dependent on the support of its 21 member associations – both for the human resources that make up our committees and also for the financial support that allows us to have the services of a full-time Executive Director.