Convention Report
Ladies dominate OWWA/OMWA program Last conference before the millennium
In their last conference before the new millennium, women domi
nated the Ontario Water Works
Association/Ontario Municipal Water Association annual meeting in Ottawa. Margaret Trudeau Kemper cap tivated the audience with her fascinat
ing recounting of her life, before giving a moving account of her late son Michel's impact on her determination to provide safe drinking water in the Third World.
ing much deeper wells. When someone enquired if the pumps used electricity or gasoline engines to draw the well water, she broke
up the audience by energetically leaping off the podium and per forming some quite vigorous comedic miming of the manual pumping systems in Ugandan vil lages. She praised Watercan's efforts to provide safe drinking water in
This is a lady who has traveled the world in luxury, meeting world leaders
Third World countries before
when she was the wife of Canadian
counts of the brutal treatment of
Prime Minister, Pieire Elliot Trudeau,
many village women. Some Judy MacDonald, outgoing 0\NWA Chair, women must cook meals, then enjoys the ever popular Casino Night spon serve their men, often compelled sored by the Ontario Water Works Equipment to approach the table on their Association. ES&E photo. knees As a final humiliation, they are son Michel was swept into a lake by an avalanche late last year while skiing in not allowed to sit at the table with their British Columbia. A mountain climber husbands or sons after cooking and serv ing the meals. Moreover, if the food is herself, she spoke of being with her son not served to the men's satisfaction, the earlier on the stunningly beautiful women servers are often rewarded by a Blackcomb mountain. "Michel," she said, "expansively gestured at the vista swift kick or other violent actions. When a questioner asked about the and said: I'm a Quebecker; why would anyone want to give all this up?" use of birth control measures to control Now, seemingly close to tears, but still populations, she replied sharply that in Uganda, AIDs was a relentless form of controlled, she spoke of her plan to cre ate and dedicate a diinking water well in birth control. She spoke of soldiers rou tinely raping village women,"leaving a Uganda in memory of her son. A more fitting memorial could not be imagined trail of AIDs in their wake". She was not afraid to confront the by this audience whose work had, long awful tragedy in her own life when her ago in Canada, wiped out endemic kill ers such as typhoid and cholera. Some of the papers presented at the
yet repeatedly she has been willing to live under canvas in Ugandan villages in order to build wells in primitive vil lage conditions. This is a most volatile lady who can swiftly change from pa thos to comedy. She spoke movingly of seeing children hideously ravaged by parasites from unsafe drinking water. Quite often,she said,the problems could be remedied simply by drilling deeper wells to prevent contamination of water supplies. Unfortunately, this could not be achieved within their village cultures until Westem technology was brought in. Canadian technical assistance had
proved effective in this regard by drillBy Tom Davey
shocking the audience with her ac
technical sessions, however, left no one
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Environmental Science & Engineering, June 1999