Alderville band council seeks funding for stream testing
HEALTH
Posted By VALERIE MACDONALD VMACDONALD@NORTHUMBERLANDTODAY.COM
Updated 6 months ago
The band council for Alderville First Nation has decided to seek provincial funding to study cold water streams running through the reserve, in an attempt to determine any possible link to the significant number of band members experiencing cancer and related illnesses, says Chief Jim Bob Marsden.
He made the comments yesterday during a media conference initiated by two Alderville First Nation mothers about an upcoming fundraiser in support of Sick-Kids Foundation, specifically for brain and behaviour research. One woman's child died of a brain aneurysm and the other is being treated for craniopharyngioma, a cancerous pituitary tumour in the brain.
The women -- Tanya Gray, who lost her 10-year-old daughter Hollie, eight months ago, and Daryl Crowe, whose five-year-old daughter Brenna, has been receiving treatment for about the same length of time, are neighbours. (See related story, Page 2)
It's not just the health of children, but of people of all age groups that concerns councillors, the chief said.
In the past year, two middle-aged men died of cancer. Band members, friends and neighours attended the funeral of one of those men just last week, Councillor Dave Mowat elaborated. An 18-year-old is currently taking his second week of chemotherapy and one of the elders has been diagnosed with cancer, he added.
"It's ringing the alarm bells" with so many cases in such a small community where those affected are neighbours, family or people you see at work or in schools, Mowat said.
"You see the suffering... different than in a large city."
One aspect of the study should be residuals from agriculture, Mowat said.
