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.
Grand Forks, B.C., resident Les Johnson is compiling photos to preserve the memory of a flood-damaged neighbourhood before it's fully gone. In May 2018, heavy snowpack and several days of torrential downpour caused local rivers in the southern Interior B.C. city to overflow. This led to severe property damage in the neighbourhood of North Ruckle, which sits on the bank of the Kettle River in the province's Kootenay-Boundary region.
Brock Biological Sciences Professor Liette Vasseur is helping municipalities to mitigate damage to their shorelines and plan for a more sustainable future. Vasseur is part of a Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative called the Mayors Advisory Council on Coastal Resilience. The council was established to work with mayors of municipalities on the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border to develop recommendations on how to mitigate the considerable damage to their shorelines caused by erosion, flooding and other impacts, and adapt to increasing water level fluctuations and other extreme weather events.
