Ladies dominate OWWA/OMWA program

In their last conference before the new millennium, women dominated the Ontario Water Works Association/Ontario Municipal Water Association annual meeting in Ottawa. Margaret Trudeau Kemper captivated the audience with her fascinating recounting of her life, before giving a moving account of her late son Michel's impact on her determination to provide safe drinking water in the Third World.

Judy MacDonald, outgoing OWWA Chair, enjoys the ever popular Casino Night sponsored by the Ontario Water Works Equipment Association. ES&E photo.

This is a lady who has traveled the world in luxury, meeting world leaders when she was the wife of Canadian Prime Minister, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, yet repeatedly she has been willing to live under canvas in Ugandan villages in order to build wells in primitive village conditions. This is a most volatile lady who can swiftly change from pathos to comedy. She spoke movingly of seeing children hideously ravaged by parasites from unsafe drinking water. Quite often, she said, the problems could be remedied simply by drilling deeper wells to prevent contamination of water supplies. Unfortunately, this could not be achieved within their village cultures until Western technology was brought in.

Canadian technical assistance had proved effective in this regard by drilling much deeper wells. When someone enquired if the pumps used electricity or gasoline engines to draw the well water, she broke up the audience by energetically leaping off the podium and performing some quite vigorous comedic miming of the manual pumping systems in Ugandan villages.

She praised Watercan's efforts to provide safe drinking water in Third World countries before shocking the audience with her accounts of the brutal treatment of many village women. Some women must cook meals, then serve their men, often compelled to approach the table on their knees. As a final humiliation, they are not allowed to sit at the table with their husbands or sons after cooking and serving the meals. Moreover, if the food is not served to the men's satisfaction, the women servers are often rewarded by a swift kick or other violent actions.

When a questioner asked about the use of birth control measures to control populations, she replied sharply that in Uganda, AIDs was a relentless form of birth control. She spoke of soldiers routinely raping village women, "leaving a trail of AIDs in their wake".

She was not afraid to confront the awful tragedy in her own life when her son Michel was swept into a lake by an avalanche late last year while skiing in British Columbia. A mountain climber herself, she spoke of being with her son earlier on the stunningly beautiful Blackcomb mountain. "Michel," she said, "expansively gestured at the vista and said: I'm a Quebecker; why would anyone want to give all this up?"

Now, seemingly close to tears, but still controlled, she spoke of her plan to create and dedicate a drinking water well in Uganda in memory of her son. A more fitting memorial could not be imagined by this audience whose work had, long ago in Canada, wiped out endemic killers such as typhoid and cholera.

Some of the papers presented at the technical sessions, however, left no one in doubt that the provision of safe, reliable drinking water requires continuous research, development and application. The supply of safe drinking water is a battle that will never end as new challenges constantly emerge.

A large range of technical papers outlined research and case histories which show new public health threats such as Cryptosporidium, are developing. In the developed countries, there have been fatalities from Cryptosporidium outbreaks in Milwaukee, in the United States, Sydney, Australia, and Oxford, England. Other parasites, such as Giardia lambia or bacteria such as Helicobacter Pylori, are among the many challenges the industry faces in North America.

Shortly after Margaret Trudeau Kemper's talk, Maude Barlow gave a brilliant, if dismaying overview of impending water shortages and problems facing us as we head into the new millennium. As Chair of the 65,000 member Council of Canadians, she reviewed not only existing global freshwater resources, but also presented an overview of some of the existing and proposed threats to resources around the world, some in the form of large dams.

She cited the Aral Sea basin, shared by Afghanistan, Iran and five countries of the former Soviet Union, as an example of severely depleted and polluted natural water resources. She also harshly criticized the Three Gorges Dam, now under construction in China which will displace millions of Chinese when constructed. Constantly and vigorously, she opposed all and any proposals for Canadians to sell fresh water, be it bottled, shipped, diverted, or sent by pipeline. An abridged version of her presentation is contained elsewhere in this issue. While her data gave an illuminating and comprehensive picture of shrinking and damaged water resources, I will argue the economic rationale of her paper in a subsequent issue of ES&E.

The OWWA/OMWA are to be congratulated in bringing two eloquent social activists into their often staid annual meetings. Perhaps this is reflected in the changing composition of OWWA leadership, which, so long a male bastion, changed radically in recent years.

The 1998/1999 Chair was Judy MacDonald, who incidently, took over from Patricia Lachmaniuk. Addressing the annual dinner on behalf of the Ontario Water Works Equipment Association was Laurie Lotimer of Lotowater. This speaks volumes of the industry's willingness to adopt changes. It was appropriate that the last major Ontario water conference in this millennium ended with a surge of activism. ES&E plans to publish selected technical papers in future issues.

Fuller Award winner Howard Shrimpton (left), is congratulated by Eric MacDonald, President of MacViro, immediately after the presentation in Ottawa.

OWWA/OMWA 2000 conference

The 2000 joint annual conference will be held in Windsor, Ontario, May 6-10. Contact AWWA at: (416) 252-7060 for details.