“Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink!” — From the 1798 poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Years ago, I visited Victoria Harbour and walked around its maritime museum. Soon after the War of 1812, Great Britain established a shipyard near Midland, building warships to protect the upper Great Lakes from the recently established and aggressive United States.
One display caught my eye. The museum listed stores the admiralty required aboard a “third-rate warship” (a ship with 64 to 80 guns). These included items like salt beef, salt pork, bread (actually ship’s biscuit), rum, cheese, butter, rope, carpentry tools, sail canvas, gunpowder, cannon balls, etc.
One item stood out: “80 barrels of fresh water.” Why would anyone insist on barrels of fresh water aboard a ship sailing some of the purest, cleanest water on Earth? Clearly, this was a standard list developed for what was then the world’s most powerful salt-water navy.
Canada has a lot of fresh water. According to Statistics Canada, more than 20 per cent of the world’s fresh water is found here. Compared to other wealthy, developed countries, Canada’s water rates highly.
However, all is not well. We often hear about poor water quality in First Nations communities. There are any number of environmental groups exclusively focused on Canadian water quality, such as Swim, Drink, Fish and Waterkeepers. Others, whose environmental concerns are broader, include water quality.
In December, I donated to the Rescue Lake Simcoe Coalition, a collection of local groups concerned with Lake Simcoe’s water quality. Our beautiful, precious waterfront is home to the Barrie Rowing Club (I have been a member for over three decades), the Barrie Canoe and Kayak Club (both at Barrie’s Southshore Centre.), and the Royal Canadian Navy League (at the foot of Bayfield Street), which teaches youngsters to sail dinghies.
All of us sit close to the water and want to keep it clean – as do the folk enjoying Barrie’s beaches in summer.
Environmental groups mostly focus on the phosphorous entering our surface waters. Phosphate leads to algal blooms, which create “dead zones” in our lakes and oceans. These areas are poor enough in oxygen to kill marine animals. Fish, crustaceans and shellfish either die or – if they can – move to better oxygenated water.
The phosphorous comes from farm fertilizer. Phosphates have been largely eliminated from detergents, shampoos and other cleaning products.
Lake Erie is shallow and very prone to this problem, but so is Lake Simcoe.
A recent summary of Lake Simcoe’s phosphate loading was published in August 2023.
But there are other water-quality issues around Ontario and indeed Canada. Most of us remember the deaths of seven Walkerton residents, plus severe illness in others, in May 2000. This was caused by water contaminated with E coli.
Some ground water under Toronto is more saline than the sea!
And despite repeated political promises to “fix” the problem, many First Nations are still under “boil water” advisories – some for decades.
Grassy Narrows’ water and fishing grounds have been tainted with mercury for five decades. Despite knowing its location, the Ontario government has been reluctant to clean up the site.
Fort Chipewyan, an Alberta village along the Athabasca River, some 200 kilometres downstream of the Tar Sands mining operation near Fort McMurray, has experienced an unusual number of cancer cases. Although numbers are small, they are much higher than expected for a hamlet of 800 to 900 people. These cancers have been linked to Tar Sands tailings ponds.
People of the Cree First Nation, living around James Bay, have been ingesting organic mercury compounds in fish – for millennia their primary food resource. The fish were exposed to mercury from pulp and paper plant effluent. The Cree have been warned not to consume fish from these waters. Are they now expected to buy (very costly) canned corned beef or Spam?
In the 16th century, the Swiss physician Paracelsus stated “the dose makes the poison,” meaning that any substance is toxic if the dose is high enough. For example, drinking seven to eight litres of water within an hour or so (hard, perhaps impossible, to do) will kill you. On the other hand, modern medicine uses many highly toxic substances — such as strychnine, atropine, digitalis, curare, warfarin and opiates — in surgery and therapeutically.
Common table salt (sodium chloride) is not normally considered toxic, however, it can kill. The lethal dose is 60 to 80 grams (four to six teaspoons). Of course, it defies imagination how anyone could consume that much.
But what if you had no choice? If you are an organism living in water whose salt concentration suddenly rises, you may well not survive. In fact, this is what happens every spring when snow begins to melt rapidly, carrying the salt which maintenance people have been spreading all winter.
Some creeks flowing into Lake Simcoe, and other lakes, become as salty as the sea for several days — even a week or so during the spring runoff. The populations of organisms in our surface waters have changed considerably due to this annual flush of salt.
What of our lake? Well, its salt concentration has been rising steadily. Over the past half-century, Lake Simcoe’s salt concentration has increased five-fold. It would need to rise far more to be recognized as toxic to humans.
Although that sounds unlikely, look at this graph. The salt concentration has risen steadily despite the introduction, two decades ago, of a scheme to limit salt application on roads called “smart about salt.”
There has been no change in the rate at which Lake Simcoe’s salt concentration has been increasing over the years. Any reduction in the tonnage of salt spread per kilometre of road has simply been overwhelmed by the suburban sprawl, which creates ever more roads for maintenance crews to treat.
There is a substantial body of scientific evidence, accumulated over 70 years, showing that increased salt intake is associated with higher blood pressure. As the salinity of our drinking water increases, more people will be at risk of developing hypertension.
In Barrie, drinking water comes from two sources: surface water taken from Kempenfelt Bay and treated at the surface water treatment plant on Royal Parkside Drive, and groundwater taken from 14 wells around the city.
Canada’s water wealth is more apparent than real. Most of our water is far from population centres. Few people live near Lakes Superior, Huron, Nipigon, Winnipeg and our other large lakes. Far fewer inhabit northern Quebec and Ontario, both studded with small lakes.
For decades, abundance has led us to undervalue Canadian water resources. This easy-going attitude has led to degradation, and that, in turn, is costing Canada serious money to rectify now.
Peter Bursztyn is a self-proclaimed “recovering scientist” who has a passion for all things based in science and the environment. The now-retired former university academic has taught and carried out research at universities in Africa, Britain and Canada. As a member of BarrieToday's community advisory board, he also writes a semi-regular column. If you have a question Peter might be able to answer or something you're curious about, email us at [email protected].
