Water, water, everywhere

In a past week, from below the 49th parallel, came an e-mail stating, “Major congratulations are in order for the Canadians. Waterloo stopped adding fluoride to their tap water at noon on Nov. 29, 2010, at four water treatment sites, after 33 years of fluoridation.”

Not often does such good, close-to-home news and congrats drift by the magic of e-mail across the international border that cleaves the friendly North American continent neatly in half. But to me, it was exceptionally good news. I have mentioned this only selectively before, but for many years, I have never been able to stomach the water that spewed from the taps of Fergus.

Originally I thought it was the high iron content, perhaps fluoridation or chlorine content; if I drank it, I became ill. This became notably more so since the infamous treatment facility violations in Walkerton, which, without doubt, woke the world up to reality.

The Little Lady and I got around the problem by simply leaving the water sit for a couple of days in large open-top jugs on the counter. In the summer, it was set in the refrigerator after the second day. The excessive amounts of chlorine, being a liquid gas that was added, simply evaporated out of the water. We were fortunate in having a couple of those big, heavy, open-topped beer jugs that were originally pilfered by students from locally established disgruntled pubs.

Our clutch of free-range gold lace bantams, headed by “Eberhart,” king of the flock, which many of the locals met, scampered about the garden eating all kinds of bugs and grubs and creepy-crawlies and would also not drink the tap water.

They were watered from the rain barrels that were down-spouted from the eaves. Even the little pair of call ducks, “Quacker” and “Quackless,” which methodically probed the yard at night with their uniquely adapted bills gobbling up earwigs, slugs and white grubs in our lawn, would select the rainwater to dabble in over the tap water when we experimented with two separate dishes.

We also watered both our orchids and young seedling plants with rainwater because they did not do well with the highly chlorinated water from the tap. To counter possible unknown contamination from the eaves troughs, we simply added several drops of hydrogen peroxide to each of the barrels of water. This worked well as the water stayed fresh and clean for many days longer, and the plants seemed to discourage the leaf-chewing and sap-sucking insects.

This, in addition to enjoying the healthy aspect of fresh, free-range chicken eggs, allowed us to keep our flowers, fruits and vegetables entirely pesticide-free throughout the seasons.

Two years of advocacy and hard work by anti-fluoridation community members led to a winning campaign. Wisdom finally won over ignorance and greed, and an important step has been taken toward safeguarding the health of their children.

Here in Canada it is highly unlikely that arrogant federal and provincial “powers that be” will stand up to the plate against the long-term misconception of damaging accumulative systemic food additives. This change will occur, as in Waterloo, one community at a time.

A tip of my soggy sombrero is due to those determined, concerned citizens of Waterloo. Bravo.

Take care, ‘cause we care.

barrie@barriehopkins.ca

519-986-4105

Barrie Hopkins

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