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.
As southern Pakistan grapples with deadly flooding along the Indus River, residents of another country with a lengthy history of floods may be wondering if it could happen here. With three coasts, nearly 900,000 lakes and more than 8,500 rivers, significant flooding events are part of Canada’s past and its future. They’re also Canada’s most expensive and most common natural hazards, according to Public Safety Canada, affecting hundreds of thousands of Canadians.
A new study in the journal Ecology suggests that last year's heat dome over the west coast of B.C. and Washington state may have "far-reaching" effects on the ecology of beaches, bluffs, inlets and river deltas, in addition to the impact on fisheries and cultural connections that the land, sea and sea life provide. The heat that descended on the West Coast last June not only killed 619 people, but also roughly a billion sea creatures, which baked to death as temperatures soared.
