Nicole Hancock
Indigenous community hosts full moon ceremony ...

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.

Indigenous community hosts full moon ceremony to heal Chedoke Creek

Watersheds Canada

River Institute, City of Cornwall and Watersheds Canada Receive Funding

River Institute, City of Cornwall and Watersheds Canada Receive Funding

The River Institute, in partnership with the City of Cornwall, and Watersheds Canada recently received funding to restore and naturalize two sites in Lamoureux Park, Rotary Creek and Rotary Point. Rotary Creek is a 257m stream that connects the historic Cornwall Canal to the St. Lawrence River. It is populated by a variety of species and provides spawning habitat for perch, bass, and chinook salmon. It is also home to the largest documented population of the cutlip minnow, a threatened species at risk in Ontario. In recent years, Rotary Creek has been impacted by invasive phragmites, which have spread and displaced native plants along the shoreline.

Waterfront property owners in South Cowichan encouraged to plant their shorelines

Waterfront property owners in South Cowichan encouraged to plant their shorelines

In partnership with Watersheds Canada, the Shawnigan Basin Society is offering a new program that will see the society work with waterfront property owners in the South Cowichan watershed to restore their shoreline by planting native trees, shrubs, and wildflowers. With shorelines facing the likelihood of increasing high flood levels and erosion rates, the SBS said it is proud to be engaged in Watersheds Canada’s Natural Edge Program by becoming the first program partner in British Columbia last year.

Nova Scotia researchers hit the water for Love Your Lake data-gathering work

Nova Scotia researchers hit the water for Love Your Lake data-gathering work

Love Your Lake is a national evaluation program developed by the Canadian Wildlife Federation and Watersheds Canada. So far it’s gathered information on 35,000 shoreline properties across the country. The project recently expanded to Nova Scotia beginning with Porters Lake, a 19-kilometre long lake on the Eastern Shore. “We will be conducting the assessments on the water with volunteer boaters and we don’t actually go on the properties, on the parcels, at all,” said Hebb, a fourth-year environmental studies student at Saint Mary's University. “We just take our assessment data sheets and we fill those out and then we log them in our data software.”

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