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.
In fact, Greater Victoria is so parched it has just set a record for the driest period in its recorded weather history, said Steven Murray, a local weather analyst who chronicles weather patterns at Gonzales Observatory in Victoria. The federal Gonzales station opened in 1914, but data for the area goes back to 1898, when weather patterns were collected at a former station on Cook Street. It is considered one of the longest-running set of measurements on the Pacific coast of North America.
