This is heartbreaking. The fire was an act of arson! What hateful person would do such a thing?
Chances are it wasn’t a ‘hateful person’ … just an out of control trouble and addicted person.
I grew up on a reserve in northern Ontario (I won’t say where because I like my anonymity). Stuff like this happens all the time. Most of the time, it’s not serious and it is just a car or truck that was burnt or a shed or a small building. Most major buildings like offices, hospitals, churches and water plants and waste water plants have round the clock security but often they can’t be protected all the time.
You have all sorts of down and out people in these reserves … alcoholics, addicts, kids hanging out with bags of solvents of all kinds … and over the past 20 years, really heavily addicted people to powerful opiods and hard drugs (which are far easier to get into communities that big bottles of liquor)
You have no clue how decrepit these northern communities have become due to the influx of opiods and little pill sized drugs that are easy to smuggle into these communities. It’s taken communities that were just getting a handle on alcohol addiction in the late 90s and reset everything back to terror by having a large portion of the young population hooked on these terrible drugs now.
Mix into that no employment, no chances for anything, no education, no help and no sympathy from the rest of the country and now have you an entire generation of people who are disconnected from their cultural past, no chance of stepping into the future and the only outlet they have is a tiny little drug that can help them escape this reality for a short time. … and God, or the Great Spirit help them when they suffer through withdrawal when they can’t get their fix.
There is a problem with water shortages and water quality in the north … but it all stems from communities having to a fight a drug war that is slowly destroying their people.
It’s ironic when you consider that the old English place name for Eabametoong FN was Fort Hope
Government needs to step up and help these northern remote communities. It is frustrating when I see news about the Ring of Fire development … when companies start talking about tearing up the land to make money, government is more than willing to throw millions and billions in the faces of CEOs and Shareholders to make a bit of money for small group of people.
But when it comes to suggesting that the government should take up its role of helping vulnerable people in this country who desperately need the most basic help … it takes lots and lots of convincing to make them listen … and it takes even more effort to convince them that it is a good moral thing to help those in need.
To those sitting on the fence wondering if these northern residents should just get out and go live in a city or town and abandon the north … how would you feel if someone asked you the same thing? Leave your home and where you are now to go live somewhere else because no one wants to help you.
This is a long term problem that requires a long term solution. If government can spend the next long period of time helping these northern communities, eventually, they will become wealthy, independent and capable of running their own affairs and in generating their own incomes and financial sources. Then once they become self sufficient, they won’t need the government any more. It’s happened, and it is happening in northern communities all the time … look at semi remote reserves like Mattagami FN north of Sudbury, they went from having very little to now running their own affairs, generating income from working with mines and doing more every year. They are doing more for their people because they are making their own money now and paying for their own projects to get things done.
It took time … lots of time … because they had to wait for kids to go to school, get an education, become professionals and take on positions at work … then find ways to work with companies and then start building … it takes about 20, 30, 40, 50 years of work to get there … but they get there.
Otherwise, if you don’t help these communities, they will stay stuck in that position for decades and generations without end and government just pouring tiny bits of money in without any results.
Help them … help them lots … help them for the long term and eventually, once they have enough help, they’ll get on their feet and start to do the work themselves without wanting or asking for any more help from anyone.
142 long term water advisories have been lifted since 2015, with 28 remaining, most of which have remediation plans in some stage of development.
The difficulty is that as new or refurbished plants come online, others break down. It’s a never ending whack-a-mole.
I work for a consulting engineering company, mostly in power utilities, but for the last number of years, I’ve been helping out with water utilities, mostly on reserve. It’s a tough situation in a lot of these places.
