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.
Whether Calgary does or doesn’t have fluoride in its water appears to be a fluid situation. Last year, council voted in favour of adding fluoride after a plebiscite question in the municipal election. However, if you think you’ve been drinking it over the last 12 months, you’re mistaken. At the time of the vote, city officials told councillors it would take between 18 and 24 months to complete the work to add the mineral back into Calgarians water. But that timeline may now be extended.
Dentists want to keep it in, but one group wants communities across Canada to keep fluoride out of the water we drink. A new group, Fluoride Free Canada, is expected to announce a new initiative to make sure fluoride is not added to drinking water in any Canadian community. Details of the announcement have been embargoed until late Wednesday morning, but it comes as the debate continues to take place in some Windsor-Essex communities on whether the anion should be added to the water.
You don’t have to be in the health field to appreciate the overwhelming evidence that supports the benefits of adding fluoride into public drinking water. In 2011, Calgary’s city council decided to discontinue fluoridating Calgary’s drinking water. This act came in direct opposition to all prominent health bodies’ recommendations. There are over 70 years of research on fluoridating drinking water, and yet in Calgary, we still have an ongoing debate that is doing nothing but increasing the number of (very preventable) dental cavities in our population.
