To Mary Wells from your old friend Helen King. I think I saw Strangelove going by the west side of San Juan Island the other day. How exciting you have bought a place in Vancouver, BC. What a great place to cruise in your lovely floating home…but that water is not as lovely as it looks. As it turns out, Canada as a whole does not have a nationwide plan or guideline to deal with sewage. It is up to each individual community to take care of their waste. Some municipalities like Whistler B.C get an A+, while others like Victoria, BC and Vancouver, BC, get an “F”. Montreal is still dumping raw sewage into the St Lawrence River. Each day 31 million gallons of raw sewage are discharged into the Strait of Juan de Fuca by BC cities, enough effluent to fill 40,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools in a year. This has been a problem since the 1970’s. Our dear Orcas are filled with PCB’s and the first calves born don’t survive due to the concentration of the PCB’s in the first milk from the mother Orca. Fish and all the animals of the sea are contaminated and all ingest the prescription drugs that are flushed, as well as all the other unhealthy things in the raw sewage. The water you see in Vancouver and Victoria, BC may look pretty and clean, but it’s NOT! I’m about a mile south of Lime Kiln Lighthouse. Wave as you go by the next time! Helen King —