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.
An Ottawa judge has certified a class-action lawsuit launched by a group of Mississippi Mills homeowners who say a local fire research lab polluted their drinking water and devalued their homes. The sprawling laboratory is owned by the National Research Council of Canada (NRC). The homeowners contend the NRC, though its negligence, released firefighting chemicals into the environment from the lab, contaminated their land and damaged the value of their properties.
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.
