Pembroke residents have united to salvage a stretch of Pembroke Canal on behalf of an elderly animal-lover.Pensioner Harry Outerbridge, 85, wants to see the ducks return to the waters that flow past his Pitts Bay Road home.For 35 years, Mr Outerbridge has made his yard a sanctuary for area wildlife. Statues and pictures of wild ducks fill the garden and his house.The birds have stopped visiting since the water became overgrown with weeds. Now a neighbourhood team is slowly clearing out the weeds and rubble, hoping to entice them back.“This is Bermuda’s only river, this creek, and it deserves to be saved,” said neighbour and friend Ralph Pitts.“It’s part of our culture and our history, and it’s wrong for Government to just allow it to decompose,” he added, pointing out vegetation and trash that have choked the canal upstream.Mr Pitts sees tourism and education potential in clearing the canal, and installing a boat or two for visitors.“I remember when there were eels and mullet here, and the bottom was white from the sand. Kids would really enjoy being able to come here again.”Mr Outerbridge’s cottage is hemmed in by industrial park developments. It marks the final stretch of the canal before it drains along the warehouses of Mill Creek Road.Government currently plans to improve drainage at the mouth of the canal, and install an “eel ladder” for the migratory fish to make a comeback.But Mr Pitts said he wants some help with tools and equipment to restore Pembroke Canal as a waterway.“You used to be able to take a punt all the way up Parsons Road,” he said. “I think if we got some help and got more people involved, we could clear it enough to have something the schools could use for field trips.”He likened the canal to other important sites set aside in the African Diaspora Heritage Trail programme.So far, the group have pulled rocks and trash and shored up the sides of the canal by Mr Outerbridge’s home.They hope to get assistance from Public Works, and the support of the Bermuda National Trust.“His place is the only cottage left along here,” Mr Pitts said. “It’s our little piece of the old Bermuda.”