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.
A mechanical problem at the Town of Espanola's water treatment plant has created an exposure risk for cryptosporidium, an intestinal parasite that can cause gastrointestinal symptoms through a condition called cryptosporidiosis. The Ontario Clean Water Agency (OCWA), which operates the plant, said it was beginning a root-cause analysis of the entire facility to figure out why the mechanical error occurred.
Twenty years after her family became seriously ill from a water-borne parasite, Christine Greer still doesn’t trust what comes out of the tap. The family of four were among an estimated 7,000 people in North Battleford — about half the city’s population — who spent the spring of 2001 incapacitated by severe flu-like symptoms. “I shared a home with my nephew and his wife and my great-nephew,” Greer, 47, recalls. “Even the baby was sick, severely sick. It was a little bit traumatic.
ONEIDA NATION OF THE THAMES — Jennifer George’s home sits on a gravel road that separates this Indigenous community near London, Ont., from the neighbouring township of Southwold. On George’s side of the road, virtually no one trusts the drinking water that flows from the Thames River to their homes. Many have the same 18-litre blue jugs that line the floor of George’s kitchen, ubiquitous sources of water for drinking and cooking.
Once a month, Susan Chipman drives to a mountainside spring that burbles from the ground in North Vancouver and fills four 20-litre containers with water to use for drinking and cooking. When full, each container weighs 20 kg. Chipman lives on the top floor of a three-storey walk-up apartment in Vancouver. Her building has running water, of course, supplied and sourced by Metro Vancouver from protected reservoirs even higher up in the North Shore Mountains. But it lacks an elevator. So, she hauls her water jugs up the stairs, one in each hand for balance. “It’s a bit of a chore in the true sense of the word, but it’s worth it, I think.” Chipman says she was hooked from the first sip. She tasted it and thought, “OK, this is real water.”
