Nicole Hancock
Indigenous community hosts full moon ceremony ...

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.

Indigenous community hosts full moon ceremony to heal Chedoke Creek

old infrastructure

Adapting old infrastructure for worsening climate challenges will be key to keeping Placentia dry

Adapting old infrastructure for worsening climate challenges will be key to keeping Placentia dry

In stormy weather, Jerome Kerivan finds himself wondering how much more pressure his eight-year-old home can take. “The last two to four years, there’s a lot more spray coming in over the breakwater that strikes the house,” he said of his sea-facing home near the Placentia lift bridge. “I get concerned. … What’s going to happen? The biggest concerns I have are the shingles and everything on the house.” The storms are more frequent and the winds are a lot stronger, said Kerivan, a retired fisherman. Like many other residents, Kerivan credits a seawall built decades ago following severe flooding in the 1980s with keeping Placentia — much of which is below sea level — protected from potentially devastating flooding.

How healthy is your office?

How healthy is your office?

“Sick building syndrome, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), recognizes the syndrome in buildings that at least 20 per cent of the occupants complain of the same the same illness: it can be headache, it can be diarrhea, it can be gastrointestinal illnesses,” says Gil Blutrich, founder and CEO of Clear, an air and water purifying company in Toronto. New York experienced water problems due to old infrastructure. “When it started to run through the pipes in New York city, the average age of the piping is over 100 years old so when the pipe started to rust, only 75 per cent reached the building, the rest disappeared, dissipated through a hole in the system.” This produced a problem called the “last mile syndrome,” says Blutrich, where the water is coming out and pathogen and bacteria is coming in.

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