Decades-old water pollution ravaged the health of 2 Ontario First Nations. Elders are still fighting for justice

When the river system became contaminated, elders such as Riffel remember the changes in the water and the sickness and death that followed.

Since 1996, Riffel has been searching for answers to what caused those deaths.

Based on her research, Riffel said she can count 10 other infants who died of violent seizures between 1947 and 1949.

She remembers babies suffering from diarrhea and persistent crying. They were all dead by a year old.

Riffel isn't the only one who remembers those days.

Evelyn Pahpasay, 82, said her mother Margaret Fobister lost two infants during the same time young Donny died.

“They died when they were babies,” Pahpasay said in a recent telephone interview about her siblings, Roy and Robert Fobister, who were both under a year old.

The family spent their summers in Quibell, especially the two younger boys and Steve Fobister, who became a revered leader and activist in Asubpeeschoseewagong. Like so many other families, they grew up eating fish from the English-Wabigoon river system.

Not only were her younger brothers sick, but Pahpasay said Steve was also frequently ill as a child. It’s something that would remain a constant ailment throughout his life. He suffered the effects of mercury poisoning and a degenerative neurological disorder and died in 2018. His family and community have pushed for an inquest into his death and have called on the federal and Ontario governments to acknowledge that the former chief’s death was a result of mercury poisoning.

Pahpasay said the water had a foul smell at the time, and as children, they were forbidden to swim in it.

In the past (and still today) the three communities of Quibell, Wabauskang and Asubpeeschoseewagong all had strong ties and family connections along the English-Wabigoon river system.

Kraft mills such as the one in Dryden, called Dryden Paper Company Limited back then, were using chemicals such as sulfur sodium sulfate and sodium hydroxide.

“Kraft paper is different,” said Mark Kulhberg, a professor in history at Laurentian University.

“Kraft pulp and kraft paper are made using more chemicals than other products, such as newsprint.”

This process created large amounts of effluent, or wastewater, which was later released into the waterways.

Miriam Diamond, an earth sciences professor at the University of Toronto, also pointed to other toxic byproducts generated from kraft mills.

“The bleaching process would have created chlorinated dioxins and furans,” said Diamond.

Chlorinated dioxins can cause development and reproductive toxicity, damage the immune system and even cause cancer. Phenols, a naturally occurring chemical, were also present and known to be toxic to humans and fish.

“There’s just a whole soup of chemicals,” said Diamond.

Growing up in Quibell as a child, Riffel remembers the water leaving foam or a green substance on the shores and what looked like black tar in the water.

“You used to have to swish the pail to clear it,” said Riffel. And then came the stories about the fish.

In the 1969 report, the Ontario Water Resources Commission cited a Department of Lands report done more than a decade earlier that revealed the “gross pollution” of the Wabigoon River and said “no fish were found to exist to a distance of approximately 40 miles downstream from Dryden.”

The few people who were able to catch fish became sick when they ate them, according to recently elected Chief Bill Petiquan of Wabauskang First Nation.

Petiquan was born in Quibell in 1956, and he remembers his mother Betty saying they used to eat the fish from the river.

“It's probably how some of the people here end up having problems with their stomachs,” said Petiquan.

Riffel remembers even the animals suffering.

“They’d fall, and some of them never got up. They just died,” said Riffel.

She remembers animals having seizures and some with bone deformities, such as arched backs or misshapen limbs.

The tribulations of the Wabauskang people continued when they had no place to live.

According to Riffel, during the early 1960s, the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, as it was called back then, wanted the Wabauskang people to leave the Quibell area, with some community members resisting.

Years later, their government-owned homes were mysteriously burned to the ground, forcing the people to relocate.

“All they said was that taxes weren’t paid, or something like that,” Riffel said about the department.

Multiple federal departments and provincial ministries said they could not comment about the burned homes in Quibell and suggested contacting the federal or provincial archives.

Library and Archives Canada could not provide answers, but instead suggested a list of files and to submit a federal access-to-information request, a lengthy process riddled with delays and the subject of many complaints.

In 1969, Ontario Water Resources Commission reported pollution in the Wabigoon River caused the disappearance of activities such as sport and commercial fishing, agricultural utilization, boating and esthetic enjoyment.

The report seemed to discount the impact a polluted river system would have on the communities dependent on them.

“(It’s like) the Native people were just in the way, the pollution was running through there, and ‘it’s not our fault they’re living there, they should be living somewhere else where the water is clean,’” said Chief Petiquan.

In 1970, the province announced the English-Wabigoon river system had been contaminated with 10 tonnes of untreated mercury since 1962. A provincial order, issued by the commission and approved by the Ministry of Energy and Resources Management, forced Reed Limited’s Dryden Paper Company to reduce mercury levels in its operation.

The mercury travelled for at least 250 kilometres. Several other Indigenous communities, such as Asubpeeschoseewagong and Wabaseemoong, were also impacted.

“If you were in a community that was on the Wabigoon River anywhere from Dryden, downstream from Dryden, then you were absolutely potentially affected by the mercury contamination,” said Brian Branfireun, a biology professor at Western University.

By 1975, news reports documented cats from Asubpeeschoseewagong and Wabaseemoong that were “ravaged by mercury” and were seen convulsing after eating fish from Grassy Lake, part of the English-Wabigoon river system.

“Why didn’t somebody reach out then … and say, ‘Hey, your family was being poisoned,’” said Della Van Wynen, a band councillor at Wabauskang First Nation.

“It’s really upsetting.”

The act created the Mercury Disability Fund to allow the two First Nations to apply for compensation if they had or developed symptoms consistent with mercury poisoning.

Each community was to receive $1 million.

Wabauskang First Nation was never part of the settlement. The First Nation says it was left out despite enduring decades-long water contamination in the early days.

Even though families living in Quibell were closer to the mill site than the other two communities that received compensation, Riffel said her community did not even learn about the contamination until the 1980s.

Asked why Wabauskang First Nation was left out, Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) wrote the two communities “initiated discussions on the settlement” and the Wabauskang First Nation would be the best place to ask.

The province of Ontario has reportedly ruled the First Nation was left out because it was in a separate watershed.

“We have never received any compensation or even acknowledgment from Canada or Ontario of what was done to us,” Riffel wrote in a 2012 letter to the Canadian media in a quest for government support. “We attempted to get both governments to address our problems many times, but we have been ignored. Canada told us it was nothing to do with them. Ontario told us there was no money to help us.”

At the time, the letter gained some media attention, but not much else. More than nine years later, Riffel’s fight for compensation continues.

Since the early 2000s, the community has conducted a variety of tests for contamination.

Today, Wabauskang First Nation is part of the English-Wabigoon Rivers Remediation Trust Panel, an $85-million provincial trust fund to help remediate the river that is unrelated to Riffel’s compensation fight.

Both Riffel and Alissa Van Wynen were invited to sit on the panel that studies and plans for the cleanup of contaminated English-Wabigoon river system.

Van Wynen, a former environmental adviser from Wabauskang First Nation, said many studies have indicated contaminants existed in the river system pre-dating the mercury dump.

“The whole focus is on mercury, but there’s other contaminants, and that’s what Wabauskang is trying to get out there,” said Van Wynen. “We’d like to have some kind of recognition and acknowledgment from the government that there are other contaminants that poisoned our people.”

From 2002 to 2009, Asubpeeschoseewagong and Wabaseemoong tested traditional meat from their territories and found high levels of furans and dioxins.

Asked whether Ontario’s Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks ever tested wild meat for furans and dioxins, a media spokesperson simply wrote no.

After more than 70 years, Riffel has waited a long time to see one thing.

“Recognition … we were the victims of some kind of contamination,” said Riffel.

The elders would also like to see a nursing home and a memorial in Quibell to honour the lives lost to industrial pollution.

A media spokesperson with the Ministry of Long Term Care wrote that no applications for a nursing home in Dryden had been submitted in 2020. ISC also wrote it is not in discussions with the community about a nursing home.

As for a memorial site, in an email, a spokesperson with the Ministry of Indigenous Affairs wrote, “There are no current plans for memorialization at any sites in the watershed.”

Dr. Anna Banerji, a professor at Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, said Indigenous people and rural and marginalized communities have a shared history of inequality.

“It’s what I would call an apartheid system, where you get resources based on race," said Banerji.

Banerji said the government is failing to provide for Indigenous communities.

“Somewhere down the line, we’re going to have to make a stand on it and prove our point and let the world know that we’ve been put through a lot of crap, too,” said Chief Petiquan.

As for Riffel, she is concerned about how much time she has left to keep her promise.

“We lost a lot of our people, (they) should have been compensated," said Riffel.

“(They are) just waiting for us to die."

This series is part of Clean Water, Broken Promises, a national investigation examining water issues in Indigenous communities co-ordinated by Concordia University’s Institute for Investigative Journalism, and in partnership with Humber College and Canada's National Observer.

— With files from Patrick Simpson and Druv Sareen