This summer, environmental groups and First Nations in Clinton, B.C., a rural village of about 650, opposed a bottling company’s application to take 500,000 litres of water a day from the local aquifer. It was far from the first time that the proposed sale of water has created controversy in Canada. But it’s usually massive schemes for bulk water exports — which aren’t allowed in Canada — rather than bottled-water businesses like the one in B.C. that grab headlines. Maclean’s published high-profiles articles on the bulk-water scare in 1999 and 2000 when an Ontario businessman applied to ship water from Lake Superior to Asia.