Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.
Michigan’s demand that Enbridge close its 68-year-old oil pipeline (Line 5) across the Straits of Mackinac joining lakes Michigan and Huron did not come out of nowhere. It is essentially the fifth “wave” of opposition to Canadian oil pipelines that suddenly erupted in 2010. The first four cases, of course, were TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline, then Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline, followed by TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline and Kinder Morgan’s TransMountain Expansion pipeline.
