The Cowichan River clean-up Saturday found everything, including a kitchen sink.

More than 60 people volunteered their time to help clean up the Cowichan River, including members of the Duncan Diving Club and the Nanaimo Dive Outfitters.

Although there were more empty cans collected than there should be, most of them came out of the big pool and just below the weir.

“Lots of debris was retrieved from the river, including many recyclable cans, many shoes, scrap metal, bottles and much too much broken glass,” said Belinda Waller, who organized the event on behalf of the Cowichan Stewardship Committee.

“It was overwhelming to see the amount of broken glass,” she added. “Organizers of the event would like to remind people using the river that ideally we would like to see river users not bringing beverage containers on the river at all or, at the least, cleaning up after themselves. However, if river users must take beverage container with them, please use plastic and cans and leave the glass at home.”

For the divers, it was an eye opener. Kevin Driver of Nanaimo said he filled seven mesh bags full of empties in just a matter of minutes.

“You couldn’t go five feet without finding stuff,” he said, while taking a break in Central Park. “I saw a lot of other junk down there, like oil drums, a hot water tank, tires, even the body of an old car.”

Divers also found an artificial Christmas tree with some decorations, a lady’s purse, an old cell phone and, of course, the kitchen sink and an old cast iron wheel.

It was the same for fellow Nanaimo diver John Bradburne, who said he brought up far too many cans. “I filled about 20 of those mesh bags,” he said.

For Bryn Wilson of Lake Cowichan, who took his row boat onto the river just upstream from the traffic bridge, it was a lot of broken glass. He was out there with Brad Mackie, Brandon Tarodi and Shane Fales.

“We filled five garbage containers with broken glass,” he said.

Darlene Pohn worked along Greendale Road near little beach, but didn’t find that many cans and other garbage in the river. She instead focused on the garbage between the river and the road and, sadly, found too much.

When the work was finished, the volunteers were treated to a free barbecue behind the Lake Cowichan Adventure Company, with the food donated by Lake Cowichan Country Grocer. Prizes were also awarded, including $100 for the most unusual item pulled out of the river. That was won by Shane Fales for finding a toy glass fire engine.

“Overall organizers were extremely pleased with how the day went,” said Waller. “Everything ran fairly smoothly, the weather was beautiful and many suggestions were made as to how to improve on things for next year. This was a great starting point and we would like to see a similar clean-up done on the lake.”