Nicole Hancock
Indigenous community hosts full moon ceremony ...

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.

Indigenous community hosts full moon ceremony to heal Chedoke Creek

old water

Miners Find 2 Billion-Year-Old Water Reserve and There Is Something Living in It

Miners Find 2 Billion-Year-Old Water Reserve and There Is Something Living in It

Water is regarded as the second most important source of life, behind air, which most organic life requires constantly. The oldest water in the world is found in Canada, specifically the Kidd Creek mine in northern Ontario. In 2016, researchers discovered what is thought to be the oldest water, estimated to be at least 2 billion years old, but more likely 2.7 billion. The circumstances at the mine's bottom have been ideal for preserving the water. This ancient water was discovered at a depth of 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) because the Kidd Creek mine is the world's deepest basal metal mine, holding numerous metal minerals such as copper, zinc, and silver.

This geologist found the oldest water on earth—in a Canadian mine

This geologist found the oldest water on earth—in a Canadian mine

When Barbara Sherwood Lollar sent water samples to a colleague at the University of Oxford for testing, she knew this was no ordinary water. The geochemist had spent much of her career wandering around some of the deepest mines in the world, finding and extracting water that was millions of years old. She waited and waited for results that should’ve come back promptly. So she dialled up the U.K. researcher in charge of the test. “I said, ‘Hey, what’s going on with the samples?’ ” she recalls. “He said, ‘Our mass spectrometer is broken. This can’t be right.’ ” The tests pegged the mean age of the samples, extracted from a mine north of Timmins, Ont., in 2009, at 1.6 billion years old—the oldest ever found on Earth.

Bacteria discovery has left island hospital relying on bottled water since March

Bacteria discovery has left island hospital relying on bottled water since March

Patients and staff at Salt Spring Island's sole hospital are still relying on bottled water, months after legionella bacteria was detected in the facility's water system. Island Health advised against using the water at Lady Minto Hospital for drinking or bathing in March, when routine testing showed low levels of the bacteria were present. 

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