Videos from a Wasaga Beach resident in Ontario are being shared widely on social media after she accused immigrants, mainly from India, of defecating in holes on the beach and burying it.
Tiktoker “ItsNattylxnn2.0,” is a local in the Ontario resort town that boasts the world’s longest freshwater beach.
“Natty” went viral online after ranting about being unable to take her kids to the beach because visitors have been using it as a toilet.
She claimed to have discovered feces in spots where she witnessed Indian families digging and even setting up a tent over the hole for the day.
“It’s pre-planned, premeditated. They dig the hole. There are tents,…They pitch the tent; you think they’re going to change, but they’re not. They are using them as washrooms,” she said in one video.
Another video in which she complained about the central part of the beach, known as Beach One, attracted over 410,000 views on TikTok.
“I’m tired of people saying that the people pooping on the beach (is) ‘what they do back home.’ We are not back home. We are in Canada, and as a local, I refuse to let my kids dig in the sand on Beach One,” she said in the video.
She has received mixed comments on her videos, from people pushing back, saying that she is lying—to many others both local and elsewhere in Canada vouching for her, saying they have experienced the same thing.
“I worked on beach one for a summer, and I used to have to tell them to stop, and they just wouldn’t,” one user said in the comments.
One TikToker from India made a video calling the minority of Indian immigrants who are acting in ways that make negative headlines like this “problematic” and not a representation of the Indian-Canadian community.
“They did it off my backyard. There were three different families of maybe 25, 30 people that came for barbecues who would set up right on the fence of my backyard. I saw them digging the hole. I saw them placing a tent (over it). When they left, there was poop,” Natty said in another video.
Natty said the issue became noticeable after the COVID-19 lockdowns were lifted.
“People were coming to the beach, and the washrooms were closed. So they were making their washrooms,” she said in another video where she called those who did so selfish.
She has faced accusations of racism for her comments.
She responded to one TikTok user who called her a racist colonizer by saying she has a First Nations background.
“People are too scared to speak up because they think that it’s being racist. It’s not because if another white person was doing that, would you feel any type of way to tell them to ‘pull your pants up.’ ‘Don’t be doing that on a beach?’” she said. “This has nothing to do with targeting someone based on their skin colour and everything to do with protecting our beaches, our parks. These are places that everyone is supposed to be able to go to and enjoy.”