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.
For 10 days every summer, a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people launch their canoes each morning after a Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address and continue on their journey down the Grand River in southern Ontario. The annual Two Row on the Grand is not just any paddling trip — it's an enactment of the Two Row Wampum treaty, an agreement made more than 400 years ago between the Haudenosaunee people and Dutch settlers.
A study measuring the quality of water in the Grand River found the majority of pollutants are coming from municipalities upstream and are concentrated around Fairchild Creek. Pesticides, e-coli, and human waste by-products are all present in the Grand River but the state of the art treatment plant in Ohsweken is filtering most of that out, according to one of the study authors, Marsha Serville-Tertullien, from Trent University. She recommended Six Nations tell municipalities up stream to clean up their act in order to reduce potential contaminants in Six Nations’ drinking water.
The Grand River Conservation Authority is urging people and businesses along the watershed to drop their water usage by 20 per cent. This week, the low water response team placed the entire watershed at level two. It means the authority is asking all water users — municipalities, aggregate operations, golf courses, water bottlers, farms for irrigation and private users — to decrease the amount of water they use. The last time a level two was declared for the entire watershed was 2016.
On June 15, grade nine students from Six Nations Polytechnic (SNP) and the STEAM Academy program donned their waders to join researchers Charles de Lannoy, Karen Kidd and Waterloo Biology Professor Mark Servos to conduct experiments in the Grand River. In its first year, this joint initiative led by McMaster University and the University of Waterloo, is a land-based experiential learning approach to science and engineering. The event is a pilot for a micro-credential course in which the students could eventually gain a McMaster University credit by the end of high school.
Warm weather that melted snow and rain over the weekend has weakened ice on local waterways, including the Grand River, which could lead to ice jams and unexpected flooding, the Grand River Conservation Authority warns. There is an increased "potential for rapidly changing conditions" on local waterways, the authority said in a flood watch message Monday.
On the rack in the backyard, the little red canoe is withdrawn, overturned and not liking it, and the crest of snow on the canvas is visible along the tumblehome. It yearns for open water now closing in on this writer. Back in 2007, after much input from listeners and a panel of judges, the CBC Radio show Sounds Like Canada picked the canoe as one of the country's seven wonders. One of those judges was Roy MacGregor. “It may have been the promise of a railroad to the Pacific that made Canada whole,” writes Roy in his book, Original Highways: Travelling the Great Rivers of Canada, "but it was rivers that carried the people west and made that railroad necessary.”
"I don't think any of us were really prepared for the scope and magnitude of the problem so we had to continuously write more grants to address emerging issues. More than anything, it was shocking," said Martin-Hill, who is Mohawk and Wolf Clan. "I really assumed the worst case scenario was going to be in Alberta and to find out the kinds of contamination that have gone into the Grand River for a century, the problems here are much worse."
Mary Anne Caibaiosai completed her four year commitment to walk the length of the Grand River from its source near Dundalk, to the mouth of the river in the Dunnville and Port Maitland area at Lake Erie and then back. The All Nations Grand River Walk started out in 2018. Caibaiosai started out leading a core group of people that grew to a larger group for the two week journey that September. Each year, more people have joined the walk where they've met people in various communities who wanted to know more about what the group was doing.
It might feel like the Grand River is an ever-constant, natural connection to our rural past as this region grows and urbanizes. But look a little more closely, and you'll see a river that's constantly evolving. We have left our imprint on the river, just as much as it's left it's imprint on our region. In the 19th century, European settlement reduced the river's natural water flows by converting thousands of hectares of forest and wetlands into farmland.
