Watershed Heroes

CodeBlue BC welcomes physician, writer, and community connector Shannon Waters as our first Local Watershed Hero. As the public health officer for the Cowichan Area, Dr. Waters is changing how British Columbians think about water. For too long it’s been seen only as a commodity to be used, she says–but it’s so much more. We belong to our waters, and our waters belong to us, she says. “Our relationship with water needs to change.” 

Dr. Waters is a CodeBlue Local Watershed Hero for her work with the Cowichan Watershed Board and for her innovative focus on water as the Medical Health Officer, Central Vancouver Island Cowichan Area, with BC’s Island Health Authority. 

She describes herself as “a public health and preventative medicine physician, environmental connector, watershed advocate, and weaver of words.”

“Our relationship with water needs to change,” she states. “When water is regarded as a relative – as a spiritual, living being, rather than a commodity that can be claimed, controlled and colonized, decisions are approached with the goal of preserving an enduring relationship. This has transformative potential, particularly in the area of protecting the sources of drinking water – the rivers, lakes and aquifers – where western legislation has failed.” 

It was the drought of 2015, and experiencing it up close and personal while living in a tent, that led to Waters’ focus on water.

By including environmental health, climate change, water and emergency management, and traditional knowledge in her public health role, she told CodeBlue, “I'm pushing some boundaries on how Island Health thinks about these things. So far, I’ve been allowed to continue bringing forward these things, in a mainstream health organization.”

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QUESTIONS FOR SHANNON WATERS

What is your first memory by water?

"My dad was in the military, and we moved all over Canada growing up. My first consistent water memories are staying with my dad's mother in Manitoba in the summer, on the Winnipeg River, jumping off the dock and swimming.

"The river was the place where the family came for gatherings, recreation, and awe.

"Winnipeg River is enormously wide. It gave me a view of rivers in their immensity and power from a young age. I was always told about being careful by the river, I was taught to be respectful of it."

What is a place that you love in your home watershed?

"I bring my girls in hot summer time to McAdam Park on the Cowichan River, where it flows through Duncan. There's pooling in the river there, and they swim.

"I feel that it's important for them to have a relationship with the river, and to see it in all its states. When the river flooded its banks, we saw salmon swimming and flopping themselves over the trails.”

Waters' family has another special spot on the Cowichan.

"Life has been intense in the last number of years. During COVID I was working long hours, and all my work was focused on communicable disease.

"When I needed a break we went to a secluded spot in the watershed, where the girls had a beautiful time playing in the river. I felt how amazing it was, that the river could really look after them for those few hours. It was really able to be there for me at a time when I mentally and emotionally needed support."

What is your favourite water critter?

The tiny, jewel-like Pacific Chorus tree frog, wuxus in the Hul’q’umi’num’ language of Waters' mother.  

The singing of the emerald or brown frogs is associated with the changing of seasons for the Cowichan and other coastal peoples, said Waters.

"My girls will find them. Once they watched them swim, and one of my girls was copying them -- and I thought, it's teaching them how to swim!"

"They are also symbolic because they're amphibious, spending their lives in both water and on the land."

What issues are you seeing impact your home waters?

“There are many, but the main thing I’ve really leaned in on is drought.”

Seven years ago, while they renovated their house in Maple Bay, the Waters family lived in a tent in their yard. “That was a bad year for drought,” Waters recalls. “Being outside all the time, it was the first time I felt a drought in my bones. I felt the land drying around me.”

“Now we are experiencing consecutive summers of drought in this watershed, and this past record summer was an awakening. But I still don’t see a lot of action coming out of that awakening.”

"I don't know what's going to happen with the Cowichan River, if it's going to continue to flow.”

“The coming years will bring difficult discussions about water use,” she predicts, including among farmers, wineries, industries, First Nations, and environmentalists. "We need to be collectively accountable to each other."

"What are ways we can change the way we, look at water, as a relative? We look at water through licensing use, and Excel spreadsheets, not entities with spirit, and soul.

“If we belong to something, we treat it differently. We nurture what we belong to, we have a relationship in which we say, ‘I belong to the river, the river belongs to me.’ Then we’re not treating it like a commodity."

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I see my role to protect the health of all people – the water, the land, the (humans), the plants, the land.

Before tackling her role in public health, Waters worked as a family doctor and in senior roles in Indigenous Health with provincial and federal organizations. 

She is Hul’q’umi’num and a member of Stz’uminus First Nation through her mother, and of Swedish, Hungarian, and Scottish ancestry through her father.

Waters is currently leading a review of BC’s Drinking Water Protection Act, as a start to aligning provincial water laws with the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.

She has a book in progress about water and what humans can learn from water.

I feel so committed to looking after the river, because of all it's done for us

“I wanted to do this job in my home territory,” she said. She brings to the role a dual modern and traditional perspective: a modern scientific focus on metrics, while considering humans and non-humans as “people” in her care. 

“It’s a weaving together of scientific knowledge and my training, and also finding hope in some of our ancestral stories.”

“I see my role to protect the health of all people – the water, the land, the (humans), the plants, the land.” 

Drought, she says, “solidified what I want to give back to the river, the watershed.

"What are ways we can change the way we, look at water, as a relative? We look at water through licensing use, and Excel spreadsheets, not entities with spirit, and soul.

“If we belong to something, we treat it differently. We nurture what we belong to, we have a relationship in which we say, ‘I belong to the river, the river belongs to me.’ Then we’re not treating it like a commodity."

“I feel so committed to looking after the river, because of all it's done for us, in terms of food, cultural practices, or how it was there for me at the moments when I needed it, and how it helps me care for my children."

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Photos courtesy of Dr. Shannon Waters