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.
A U.S. company hoping to revitalize fisheries while pulling carbon dioxide out of the air and water wanted to develop its technology in Canada, but gave up after getting a reception from Canadian authorities as chilly as the North Atlantic. Instead, Running Tide is operating in Iceland, deploying a fleet of sensors in the ocean this year in collaboration with Icelandic shipping company Eimskip.
But it's the wetlands and bird sanctuary, just a few metres away on the presidential estate, to which Reid and her husband, President Guðni Jóhannesson, draw the attention of a visiting CBC News crew. "We had ditches there," Jóhannesson said, pointing to a grassy area close to the shoreline. "They were dug in the 1930s to cultivate the land. Now, we are filling up those ditches [with water]. It's a case of wetland reclamation."
