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.
For a while, every time Caetano Dorea's kids took a bath, he used a bilge pump to save the water and pour it on his plants outside. As a University of Victoria engineering professor specializing in wastewater treatment, Dorea knows more than the average person about how much water the average household uses in Canada.