A ‘serial pooping problem’ or something else? What’s really behind the rumours about people defecating at Wasaga Beach

But as the crowds have swelled and then settled in, so too has a persistent rumour — that some of those visitors are pooping in the sand.

Locally, it’s been debated and joked about. Mayor Brian Smith, who called the rumour “misinformation” in a public statement earlier this month, declined an interview about what he termed a “non-issue,” and pointed to the more pressing problems the town is dealing with, like “crumbling” park infrastructure. Premier Doug Ford was pulled into the fray too when, in response to a question, he noted that while there “wasn’t 100 per cent proof” of any incidents, he still implored, “Folks, don’t go pooping on the beach, simple as that, man.” Most news coverage treated the story as a simple scuffle over beach etiquette, after concerns were raised by a local citizen who first posted the allegation to TikTok. Even talk show host Stephen Colbert made a joke about it. But the conversation online goes much deeper — and much darker — than that, and shows how local issues can get co-opted to push racist narratives on social media. 

“The whole poop thing, it’s a difficult thing to talk about, because the reality is, we don’t want people to focus on such a small issue for an incredible community like Wasaga Beach,” said Mark Winegarden, the co-owner of Grandma’s. “When huge issues like this come up, whether it’s huge or not, sometimes it’s how it’s responded to that makes it huge.”

****

When Natasha Lynn sat down and opened TikTok on July 9, she was fired up over the fact that her friend had told her she’d seen someone defecating on the beach. “I’ve decided that I am going to start doing segments. I don’t know when I’m going to start, maybe this weekend, because I need the weather to be really nice for this to be a thing,” she says emphatically in a video post, her phone capturing her seated in front of a brick wall.

“I’m going to go start catching people pooping on the beach. I’m going to do it. I’m not scared of people.”

According to other videos on her page, Lynn — who asked that her last name not be used because of online harassment, but posts under the handle @itsnattylxnn2.0 — has lived in Wasaga Beach for almost five years.

In some videos, she explained how she could see people set up tents from her backyard and when they left, fecal matter would be left behind. She described how she wouldn’t let her kids play on Beach 1, a heavily trafficked strip of stores and restaurants known locally as the Main End, and that other locals wouldn’t either. Her concerns were swiftly picked up by news organizations, who described her as a local resident and mother of three. 

“It’s not locals doing it, it is people coming from out of town and it is immigrants that think it’s OK to dig a hole and pop a squat,” she claims in a video posted July 10.

What was not mentioned in media stories and the general conversation were her theories about who exactly was responsible for the bad beach behaviour. “There is people using the beaches and parks as outhouses and I don’t think I can talk about it because they are immigrants. I’m scared to be called racist,” she wrote in a video posted on July 11. A few days earlier, she’d been more specific, saying it was “Indian families” who were responsible for digging holes on the beach and pooping in them.

Lynn is adamant she is not racist — one of her children has Indian heritage, she points out — and that she sees her videos as speaking up for her community. She denies she is targeting South Asian people in general and that, if anyone is to blame for the issue, it’s the government for increasing immigration numbers. (As she put it in one video, “This is not about everyone that’s an immigrant, it’s about the ones who bring bad habits from where they came from with them.”) 

She said most of the feedback to her posts has been supportive, particularly from other town residents. (Many other residents who spoke to the Star said they were appalled by the videos.) 

“I may not have a lot of money but I have a lot of care to give,” she wrote in the caption of a video on July 25. “For once in my life I feel heard. I feel seen.”

Still, actual evidence for these claims is thin. In a recent phone call with the Star, Lynn said she’s been recognized from her videos, which has made it challenging, particularly as a mother of young children, to get down to the beach to monitor behaviour as she’d planned. When pressed for more concrete evidence that defecation is a widespread problem, she said her videos speak for themselves and hung up on a Star reporter. 

Her claims continue to be swiftly denied by authorities, by the town and by government officials — the waterfront strip is a provincial park, ensuring access to 14 kilometres of sandy shore — who said there was no evidence to back up her allegations. “Park wardens are being extra vigilant when patrolling park areas and beachfronts to ensure that visitors are being respectful of the park,” noted an email from a spokesperson for Ontario Parks. 

On a recent afternoon, many beachgoers said the rumours were concerning, ridiculous — funny, even — but it wasn’t enough to keep them away from the sand. But still the possibility lingered.

“I’ve heard it a few times,” said one longtime resident, who didn’t want to be named because of fears over ruffling feathers in a small town, as she was sitting in a chair reading a novel in a slightly less crowded area of the beach. “Enough talk that, yeah, I do, I do believe it,” she added. “Maybe I’m wrong to believe it without seeing proof. But when enough people start talking about something, you start to think maybe there was something to it.”

“Maybe nobody’s doing that, and everybody’s blaming an entire culture of something they’re not doing. But where did it start and why?”

****

Regardless of her original intentions, Lynn’s videos have been taken out of her hands and used to bolster the anti-South Asian sentiment that is increasingly being pushed in this country.

“Wasaga Beach has gained a lot of attention in certain kinds of Canada-focused, far-right social media spaces,” says Peter Smith, a researcher and journalist with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network.

“In particular, South Asian people are being blamed both in the videos that went viral, and kind of writ large for a number of other things by the far right.”

Lynn’s videos were quickly used to prop up a growing sense on far-right social media in Canada that people of South Asian descent — men who had immigrated from India, in particular — were responsible for an outsize chunk of society’s problems, Smith says. The specific phrase “they have to go back” has become popular.

Now the idea that people from India are pooping on Canadian beaches is being used to bolster that narrative, and has been widely shared by X (formerly Twitter) accounts associated with the right. “I don’t think this is about race, I think this is about massively irresponsible immigration just coming to fruition,” says a video posted by Real Toronto Newz, an account with half a million followers on Instagram.

On a livestream for her more than 700,000 followers devoted to discussing the perceived problems of “mass immigration” and the recent riots in the U.K. — which are believed to have been spurred by social media posts  — alt-right YouTuber Lauren Southern also referred to Canada’s “serial pooping problem” being caused by new immigrants.

The Wasaga Beach claims neatly feed a wave of anti-South Asian sentiment that goes back a few months, Smith argues. The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, a U.S.-based organization that tracks far right movements, argues the focus on South Asians found root this spring in Prince Edward Island after a student protest against new rules limiting the extension of work permits. Members of Diagolon, a Canadian white supremacist group, are now using anti-Indian messages in their recruitment and training, the organization argues. 

There are all sorts of legitimate debates about immigration — how it affects taxes, or schools, say — but the conversation tips into racism when it starts pushing the idea that people from a certain country are dirty or smell or are otherwise scapegoated for widespread issues, said Heidi Beirich, one of the group’s co-founders. 

Anti-immigration sentiment is on the rise in many parts of the world, including Europe and in the U.S., but tends to take different forms depending on the country, Beirich said. While in the U.S. the focus is on Latinos, Beirich argues that in Canada it’s South Asians who currently bear the brunt, given the number of people here with roots in that part of the world.

“It’s the same as when Trump and many people on the far right (in the U.S.) call immigrants ‘invaders’ and ‘criminals,’” she said. “We’re not having a reasonable discussion about immigration, we’re having a discussion about race.”

It’s an increasingly toxic sentiment that is now arguably leaching back into the real world. In early August, the World Sikh Organization raised the alarm about what it described as the overlap between Canadian alt-right groups and Indian nationalist social media content, which were both amplifying and promoting “anti-Sikh hate content” online. According to Statistics Canada, reported hate crimes targeting the South Asian community grew by 143 per cent between 2019 and 2022.

****

Adsaya Jegatheesan and her four childhood friends refused to let hearsay ruin their much-anticipated beach day.

Beneath blue skies Thursday, the 21- and 22-year-old friends lay on beach blankets listening to music as they enjoyed their spaghetti and meatball lunch. For most of them, it was their first visit to the beach town this year.

This year, Wasaga Beach will celebrate its 50th anniversary, marking a half century since the farming and logging outpost officially incorporated, paving the way for a defined community, but one that depends on the business of outsiders, too. These days, even mid-week afternoons see a diverse crowd of young families, couples and friends set up shop in the sand, music blasting as food trucks peddle ice cream and burritos and Italian sausages on a bun.

The friends had made a plan two weeks ago to take a day off work and make the two-hour drive north from Scarborough — right around the time they came across Lynn’s viral video. “There was no proof. It was way too crazy,” Jegatheesan said.

While the group agreed their happy feelings about Wasaga Beach were largely intact, they mused that the anti-immigration rhetoric directed at South Asian people specifically can be dangerous, and questioned why people are “so easy” to blame one ethnic group over others. 

“It can be dangerous,” Jegatheesan added. “Some people believe it.”