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.
During an unrelenting stretch of dry, hot weather last August, Rachel Mahannah and her husband spent two hours a day hauling water from their other farm a kilometre and a half away, to make sure their dairy cows didn't get dehydrated. The well on the dairy farm, 70 metres deep, had almost run dry. "That was the first kind of red flag that came up for us," said Mahannah, who co-owns Mahvhays dairy farm in Brigham, Que., about 75 kilometres southeast of Montreal.
