For Grassy Narrows families, mercury is an intergenerational trauma. For political parties, it’s a federal election issue

For Grassy Narrows families, mercury is an intergenerational trauma. For political parties, it’s a federal election issue

By Geoffrey York

Source: theglobeandmail

10/9/2019

Fifty years after an Ontario First Nation learned its fish were poisoned, research suggests the damage is being handed down from parents to children. On the campaign trail, activists are pressing the parties to build a treatment centre for those afflicted

For years, Chrissy Isaacs watched her grandfather struggle with the symptoms of mercury poisoning. He was a fisherman and a guide, his health damaged by the contaminated fish he ate.

Today, she worries about the fourth generation of his descendants. Her daughters, 18 and 13, are showing signs of neurological issues she believes are linked to the same mercury contamination that has devastated her community.

Generation after generation, Grassy Narrows First Nation has seen its crisis painfully prolonged. It has been almost 50 years since the revelation its fish had been poisoned by tonnes of mercury dumped into its river system by a paper mill owned by Reed Paper Ltd., in the Northern Ontario city of Dryden.