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.
Joanne Dally, 63, says she doesn't know when she will be able to host her next dinner party — she hasn't had running water at home since mid-October because the well on her property, her only source of water, has run dry. "We have to go to relatives to shower, we have to haul our water in totes, go to the laundromat," said Dally, who has lived in her home, a few kilometres west of the Fraser River near Prince George, B.C., since 2013.
Leadership in Eabametoong First Nation in northwestern Ontario have ended the state of emergency now the community's water treatment plant is producing running water and all of its members have returned home following community evacuations last month. The remote Ojibway First Nation of about 1,600 people is approximately 360 kilometres north of Thunder Bay and It has been in a state of emergency since July 5, after a fire broke out at the Eabametoong First Nation Water Treatment Plant.
David Galvin's water is running for the first time in nearly three months. The long-awaited repairs to pipes at 1083 Main St. E. in Hamilton began last week. While the water is icy cold, with the hot water not yet connected, Galvin said it's proof of what the tenants have been insisting since late December — the work could be done in a matter of days without anyone having to move out.
For 57 days David Galvin has had no running water in his Hamilton apartment. He said he hasn't been able to shower there or properly clean his home since the water was shut off Dec. 28. "I'm emotionally and physically debilitated from the stress," Galvin told CBC Hamilton. "I can't sleep. My guts are all out of order." He's lost hope the water will be turned back on anytime soon — for him or the other tenants who have lived there for years, he said.
Her elderly neighbor is hard of hearing so Maria Luisa Robles, a convenience store worker in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, shouted the question a second time: Have you run out of water? She had - and it wasn't just her. The taps across this working-class neighborhood of Sierra Ventana dried up over a week ago amid a historic shortage that's gripped the most important industrial city in Mexico.
With no running water and only a wood stove to heat his remote Quebec cabin, Mark Hogben starts each morning by making a fire and boiling lake water. Then the 54-year-old signs in to TikTok to check the analytics of his latest videos and touch base with a global community of online friends, many of whom, like him, have Parkinson's disease. While TikTok is best known for viral videos of Gen Z dance trends and comedy sketches, the former Montrealer says he's surprised to attract millions of views for self-shot clips of mundane chores that include chopping wood, fetching water and cleaning his chimney.
Three children in Esquimalt, B.C., were wheeling totes full of water from a neighbouring condo building to their own home Monday morning. It was not how these three expected to begin their spring break. "We woke up on Saturday morning to rushing water, a basement full of water," said Hollie Johnson, owner of a condo at 877 Ellery St. in Esquimalt on Monday.
On Nov. 15, 2021, Kevin Vilac’s phone started ringing at 4 a.m. He was needed at work — urgently. The Coldwater River in B.C. had breached its banks and threatened to overwhelm the city of Merritt’s wastewater treatment plant. Vilac, the chief water operator for the city, rushed to the site to find the lower level of the plant inundated with water. “The worst flood I’d been through prior to this was the flood in 2018 from the Nicola River, and in comparison, it was nothing. It was a mere trickle compared to what we just went through,” he says.
When the prime minister addressed on-reserve water advisories in last week’s English leaders’ debate, he made it sound like the water issue was well in hand. The casual way that Canadians all the way up to and including the prime minister talk about First Nations water issues shows that the country still does not get it. Even in the unlikely event that all water advisories are lifted, First Nations people will still be struggling to access this necessity of life.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau no longer gives a specific date for fulfilling his broken 2015 election promise to end all long-term boil-water advisories on Indigenous reserves and it’s not hard to see why. He broke that promise when he failed to achieve the March 31, 2021 deadline he set for himself. On Monday, Trudeau said his government has eliminated 109 long-term boil advisories since coming to power in 2015 and will finish the job … eventually. Actually, they’ve eliminated 108 long-term advisories, and now have 51 (not 50) outstanding ones. That’s because the feds, as of Monday, hadn’t updated their own website to report the boil-water advisory for Okanese First Nation in Saskatchewan has changed from short-term to long-term.
Environmentalists and activists claimed victory recently after a company cancelled plans to build an oil pipeline through southwest Tennessee and north Mississippi, and over an aquifer that provides drinking water to one million people. Byhalia Connection said it will no longer pursue plans to build a 79-kilometre underground artery that would have linked two major U.S. oil pipelines while running through wetlands and under poor, predominantly Black neighbourhoods in south Memphis.
Flett was confident that when the water left the plant it was as clean and drinkable as any you can find in Canada. Garden Hill has never had a long-term boil water advisory and even short-term advisories are rare. Even so, like many Garden Hill residents, Flett and his family refuse to drink the water that comes out of their tap at home. They stopped in 2015 after everyone in the family got sick.
Recently elected Xeni Gwet’in chief Jimmy Lulua doesn’t have running water in his own house. He brushes his teeth from a cup. It is a daily reminder of how precious water is to his people — but, he noted, “It’s not by choice.”
“We’ve never been high on the government’s priority list,” he said. “We live in a third world country in one of the richest countries in the world.”
