FROM ACROSS the country and abroad, hearts and wallets opened up for the rural town whose name everyone now seemed to know. Relief supplies poured in as people, small businesses, and large companies from near and far donated money, bottled water, bleach, toothbrushes, showerheads, food and food supplements, and other supplies. For its part, the provincial government announced an emergency relief package to cover out-of-pocket expenses for both individuals and businesses hit by the crisis. But despite the largesse and sympathy, and even as the urgency of caring for the sick and burying the dead eased, the town’s shock and anger turned to depression. A blanket of despair began to settle over the besieged community. Out-of-town school teams cancelled games in Walkerton, or told the town’s teams to stay away. Stories circulated about how a family from the town had been asked to leave a restaurant in Hanover, or how store clerks were afraid to handle money from Walkerton shoppers. Businesses struggled to stay afloat, if they were able to open at all. Employees were ill. Patrons stayed away. Who would want to eat in a Walkerton restaurant, stay in a Walkerton motel? People showed up at work, eyes red from the chlorine in the shower water. Hands turned raw. Homes smelled of bleach. Children began exhibiting symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Had they been sent away to live with a relative or friend because they’d been bad? Where were their buddies? Offered a chance to look inside a real helicopter, one little boy recoiled in horror. That, he said, would mean being taken away, maybe to die. Another child hid a bout of diarrhea from his parents. He didn’t want to end up being flown off to a big-city hospital as had happened to a playmate down the street. Parents worried as they kept kids away from taps and out of the lawn sprinkler that is every child’s right on a hot summer day. Each day, people filled containers of water from a tanker or picked up donated bottles of water from the arena and lugged them home or dragged them up stairs. Mundane chores, washing vegetables, brushing teeth, doing the dishes, giving the kids a bath, became a constant reminder of the abnormal situation in which they lived. One time, Lloyd Cartwright reached for the bottle of water next to the basin to rinse his mouth. He accidentally grabbed the bleach bottle next to it, a slip that left him with nasty burns to his mouth and lips. His wife Marie’s bridge team decided to skip the regional tournament. They just didn’t feel welcome. The arena, packed almost to the rafters with donated bottled water, cancelled the normal events that provide the fun and games that help bind a community. Baseball diamonds, usually filled with the friendly rivalry of area teams playing ball, were empty. One night, a bunch of youngsters at a typically teenage loose end opened the tap on the giant water tanker and left it gushing. Residents coming to fill their bottles the next day were dismayed to find it empty. The Concerned Walkerton Citizens intervened. A new tanker would come and this time there would be security. But the plan was scrapped when someone decided that tanker water was vulnerable to contamination anyway. Instead, only bottled water, this time courtesy of the provincial government, would be made available. Strangers intruded into every home, leaving red tags on water mains and concentrated chlorine solutions in every pipe and every tap as the tedious, painstaking task of cleaning the system got underway. Streets were dug up as underground mains were located and replaced. The remediation bill began mounting into the millions of dollars. Who would pay? How long would it last? What would happen to the children who had been so deathly ill? When, in God’s name, would it just be over? No one could say. Mayor Dave Thomson retreated behind his communications firm and his lawyer, Rod McLeod. Town hall meetings designed to provide information left townsfolk angry, frustrated, and wholly unenlightened. They felt cut off from their civic leaders, mistrustful of their provincial politicians, and denied straight answers. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien had sent a message of sympathy, but no one from the federal government dared enter the political swamp that Walkerton was becoming. Still, to the casual eye, the town stood as it always had. There had been no earthquake. No devastating fire. No tornado. It all looked so normal. Why then was everyone so gloomy?
For Rita Halpin, it felt like the war again, when the menfolk in her family disappeared overseas to fight, many never to return. Left behind, the women back home waited, their dread hidden behind a mask of seeming indifference. Life would go on. People would go about their business. No one need know. But there was no escaping the assault on Walkerton. Clothes seemed to age with every wash. Fabric that escaped the ravages of bleach succumbed to the onslaught of chlorine. Their out-of-town grandchildren were reluctant to visit and became uneasy in their apartment when they did. Rita felt as if the community itself, the little town she loved, had been ravaged and beaten, and she despaired, quietly, away from prying eyes. But the anguish engulfed her husband, Terry. The same indescribable sorrow he felt when he lost his daughter and grandson in a horrific car crash more than a decade earlier reappeared from nowhere. An unwelcome demon of gut-wrenching mournfulness had returned with a vengeance, set loose by the water crisis. He constantly felt on the verge of tears. When the death of Maurice (Rocket) Richard, the famous Montreal hockey player of a bygone era, displaced the E. coli disaster as the top news story, the tears came at last. But the grief that flowed down Terry’s cheeks was really for Walkerton. Whenever they could, the couple fled the town for the refuge of their sailboat, where they could shower or brush their teeth without hassle. In the end, the Halpins gave up looking for a house in the town they loved, the town in which they had planned to live out their lives. They moved instead fifteen kilometres north to Chesley, The Nicest Town Around, or so the welcome sign on the road says.