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.
When the Zim Kingston spill happened, much of the early public attention was focused on two missing containers that carried the hazardous chemicals potassium amyl xanthate and thiourea dioxide. Those containers have not been located. Both Hoyland and Laviolette say the amount of plastic that went into the water can be hazardous in its own way, polluting the environment and the food chain or injuring animals before eventually making landfall.
A University of Saskatchewan (USask) graduate student hopes his doctoral research into issues of water insecurity faced by Indigenous people in Manitoba will lead to positive policy changes. In November, Warrick Baijius defended his PhD thesis on Indigenous water governance, which was co-supervised by Dr. Bob Patrick (PhD), a faculty member in the Department of Geography and Planning in USask’s College of Arts and Science, and Dr. Chris Furgal (PhD), a faculty member in the Department of Indigenous Studies at Trent University.
Following public uproar of the Alberta government quietly pulling the 1976 coal policy, opening up more areas of the province for coal mining, a Calgary committee has started work to find out how those changes could affect the city on the Bow and Elbow Rivers. “The good news is, we found out today that although there’s different (land use) categories, the main category of the national parks and everything for our river system in the Bow is not affected with this policy,” Ward 1 Coun. Ward Sutherland said. “Obviously we’re very pleased with that.”
