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.
It’s something we use everyday — couldn’t survive without, actually — and often take for granted. Yet freshwater could run out by 2040 at our current rate of consumption, says a report by BofA Global Research. “Some 75 per cent of our planet is covered with water, yet less than 1 per cent is usable, and even this is depleting quickly,” said BofA equity strategists led by Haim Israel.
“siwɬkʷ (WATER) IS SACRED AND IS LIFE FOR ALL PEOPLE. We know from our histories and our knowledge that water is one of the most important resources available to humans and animals.” But for Dawn Machin and Sarah Alexis, both from snƛ̓x̌ʷx̌ʷtan (Six-Mile Creek area in the North Arm of Okanagan Lake), there’s a disconnect between what water represents to humanity and how it’s perceived.
Water will be on every lunch and dinner menu at the upcoming international climate conference COP26 — but it won’t be on the agenda. That’s not for lack of effort at Copenhagen in 2009, Lima in 2010 or Paris in 2015, where a separate “Paris Pact” addressing water was not formally adopted. Even events hosted by the UN, which formally recognized water as a human right in 2010, tacitly treat water as a commodity. Between droughts, floods, and fires, it should be clear this is not enough. Not only should we measure the changing surface temperature of our planet in degrees, we must count every drop.
Despite the apparent abundance of water in Canada, she said, low prices mean the best-quality water in many regions — such as Southern Ontario groundwater — is in increasingly short supply and is being overused. Roy Brouwer, executive director of the Water Institute at the University of Waterloo, said that when he came to Canada from the Netherlands five years ago, he was surprised by the low price and wasteful misuse of water in this country.
