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.
Waste-water surveillance indicates the Omicron surge in COVID-19 cases appears to have plateaued or even begun to fall in major cities across British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, but this type of monitoring is carried out on less than two-thirds of Canada’s population. Sampling sewage to find population-level transmission trends is one of the most reliable methods of tracking the spread of COVID-19 as the swift spread of Omicron has swamped testing regimes across Canada.
