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.
University biologists say striped bass that recently washed ashore in northern Cape Breton probably died from a sudden temperature change in the ocean. A video posted to the Port Morien Wildlife Association's Facebook page on Monday shows what looks like hundreds of dead fish in North Bay, near Dingwall, N.S. Trevor Avery, a biology professor and lead researcher with the Striped Bass Research Team at Acadia University in Wolfville, N.S., said he doesn't know for sure what happened.
Some Nova Scotians in northern Cape Breton have been able to get around storm-damaged roads by boat, but in another part of Victoria County, others are still cut off and waiting for relief, after heavy rains and high winds battered the region last week. "It's very heartbreaking out here," said Bev MacAskill, who lives on Oregon Road just off the Cabot Trail. "We have no way to get out except by helicopter."
"A lot of it, we're going to find, I guess, more damage as the water recedes, because it's really hard to tell until the water recedes," he said. "It's probably easier to describe the number of roads that don't have problems than the ones that do." The Emergency Management Office is asking people in Inverness and Victoria counties to stay off the roads. Lyle Donovan, EMO co-ordinator in Victoria County, said more than a dozen roads are washed out and a man was injured when his car got stuck on one of the damaged roads.
