Cape Town, South Africa is running out of water.
Compared to Gilford Island, a Kwakwaka’wakw First Nation reserve on B.C.’s temperate rainforest coast, that sounds like an upgrade — at least in Cape Town they still have some water to drink.
Kwakwaka’wakw Hereditary Chief Bill Wilson’s mother is from that reserve. For 50 years, he has watched the water quality decline — first, as logging removed the island’s natural filtration systems, then, as a series of bungled procurements failed to deliver a water filtration system that worked.