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.
When Craig Purchase visited his normal fishing spot upstream of Terra Nova Lake this past Labour Day weekend, it was clear why angling was off the table. "Where it would normally be waist deep, there was two to three inches of water," Purchase, who's also a professor of biology at Memorial University, said. Bare rocks and trickling brooks have been a common sight through a swath of central Newfoundland this summer, Purchase said.
