STEPHANIE HOBBS'
WALKERTON WELLNESS WATER STORY
As told to and written by Beverley Viljakainen

Stephanie was born in Streetsville, Ontario, and at the age of 12 moved to the Maritimes. She eventually found her way to Walkerton, in March 1996, to take a temporary job. And, as temporary jobs go, one job led to the other. Presently, she's a training coordinator for a provincial literacy group. Much of her work is done at home with weekly trips to Kitchener where the group is based. It was in this context, then, that she found herself in the midst of the infamous May 2000 E.coli outbreak in the town she now calls home and counts herself most fortunate not to have become ill because of it.

I found Stephanie more than usually knowledgeable about the details surrounding the water contamination and quite interested in the fact that apparently no geographical pattern has emerged in terms of where people lived and worked and whether or not they got sick. She has signed up to be part of the Wellness Study being conducted under the auspices of the London Health Sciences Centre. It's Stephanie's understanding, based on an earlier public information meeting, that this study will have three components: 1) the people who were ill: 2) those who are still ill: and 3) people who were not ill or not yet ill. .

Stephanie has used a carbon filter on her water supply for several years and now has a water cooler unit provided by a local filtering supplier, mainly because she doesn't want to drink chlorinated water. She cooks with the tap water but not if the food absorbs the water as rice does, for example. Like so many others in Ontario and other parts of Canada, she would like to see local and provincial officials responsible for water quality consider substituting alternatives like ultra-violet treatment for present chlorination practices.

When asked why she thinks she didn't get sick, Stephanie owned to being somewhat puzzled about it herself. Was it pure luck or did it have to do with being a fairly healthy person with a strong constitution? In her student days, she read Frances Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet. She doesn't like how meat and other foods are produced and processed for mass consumption. Stephanie thinks about what she eats and why. She will eat a little fish and some chicken when she knows it has been grown without hormones and other additives. Nor was she raised with a lot of bad health habits. Her father, an organic market gardener, wouldn't allow processed foods in the house, which meant that Stephanie developed a taste for whole foods quite early. She seeks out organically grown produce and eats a lot of unprocessed yoghurt that contains live bacteria known for their beneficial effects in the intestinal tract. She did a lot of yoga when she was younger and now enjoys t'ai chi.

She knows that the carbon filter she was using on her drinking water wasn't enough to deter the E.coli and wonders if, perhaps, the antibiotics she was taking at the time of the outbreak for an infected tooth may have acted as a preventative before the E.coli actually took hold. She also notes that her stress level had been low at the time and whatever stress there was, primarily around the financial realities of temporary part-time employment, she felt quite able to handle.

Had Stephanie become sick, she would have initially looked after herself, with the help of friends, if necessary, and her doctor who is what Stephanie calls a wellness physician. This doctor wants to know how her patients are psychologically so that she can understand their wellness ratio before looking for what's wrong with them physically. She's also well-versed in the so-called alternative remedies that tend to be less toxic and immune-suppressing than the usual slate of prescription drugs and she doesn't hesitate to inform her patients about them. Not one to fool around with her health, and knowing there are no guarantees, Stephanie is doing what she can to remain immune to the cumulative effects of contaminants that were likely in the Walkerton water long before the May 2000 outbreak. She just doesn't know how her health has been affected or what's lying in wait for her, although she may be a little more knowledgeable after she's been tested for E.coli at the clinic established in town this past January.

Asked to philosophize a bit about the whole issue of water, Stephanie says that she is appalled by the attitude towards this essential aspect of life. While it may be the norm in small places to assume that everything is running well, it's everyone's responsibility to ensure that all of the necessary precautions are taken. The citizenry need to ask more questions and those responsible for water quality need to provide the answers. People need to know. In Walkerton, there seemed to be a general assumption that nothing could go wrong simply because what was always done was still being done. Only after the fact were water-reading reports posted publicly. One good thing that came out of the E.coli outbreak was the coming together of environmentally aware and concerned residents to form the Walkerton Healthy Community Initiative. Stephanie has really enjoyed working with these people who know that we are all responsible for the environment in which we live and that, together, we can make a difference. She is concerned that many people seem still to be unaware of their impact on the environment. Her hope is that public awareness will increase and that more and more people will be motivated to decrease their everyday impact on the earth, water and air so that they too can become part of the solution rather than continue to tax the natural resources that sustain us all.

Did she ever consider leaving Walkerton after the E.coli incident? The thought did come up, but Stephanie noticed at the time an inertia around doing so, perhaps because of the stress of having sick friends and wondering about her own health. She just didn't want to deal with the extra stress of moving. And to where? One day, she may go north. She likes her apartment well enough and she's made some friends here. So for the time being, she'll stay put and get on with her life, doing the best she can to sustain a healthy way of life, in spite of not really knowing what the future may bring. What else can any one person do? All the best to you, Stephanie, in all of your present and future endeavours.

May 31, 2002

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