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.
Atmospheric rivers have been making headlines over the past couple of years. At their worst, they have been the cause of major flooding in California as well as devastating flooding in B.C.’s interior in 2021 — along with even more flooding in the province this past winter. And many experts have noted that global climate change caused by burning fossil fuels is making these events worse.
“It's a very similar storm,” Bob Robichaud, a senior Environment Canada meteorologist based in Nova Scotia, told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview. “It's the same type of atmospheric setup that would generate this type of rainfall.” He explained that this type of extreme rainfall event, like the one in B.C., occurs when a “very concentrated plume of moisture in the atmosphere that streams up from the tropics” becomes part of a storm.
