This riveting eco-justice memoir reveals shocking, chronic water injustices in rural Canadian Indigenous communities. Blacklin humbly shares the sacrifices her late husband, Dr. Hans Peterson, made researching, then inventing and perfecting water treatment systems. He worked eighteen hours a day, every day, in the last fifteen years of his life. Frustrated by ineffective government research and Canada’s rural drinking water health crisis, Hans invented the initial IBROM, a ground-breaking, self-sustaining biological water treatment system, superior to outrageously expensive, ineffective systems. While living on reserves for seven years, he trained local Indigenous people to maintain their IBROM systems, currently used on twenty reserves. Despite years of fundraising and being stonewalled by government corruption and indifference, they worked with international scientists to create the Safe Drinking Water Foundation’s educational and advocacy programs. Thirty years later, a majority of rural Indigenous communities still don’t have safe drinking water, after lobbying for years to install more cost-effective IBROM systems. Blackin’s thought-provoking first book calls for a commitment to reconciliation, ensuring clean water as a basic human right for all Canadians.

Cautions / Content Warnings: First-person accounts of severe health effects from unsafe water treatment systems in rural communities include body lesions and subsequent deaths.
Other End Matter: Acknowledgements, extensive end notes, recommended reading, seven appendices (e.g., responsible governments, educators guide: extensive questions/prompts, link to film and panel discussions)
Images: None
Bibliography: Yes
Index: Yes

Evaluator: Denise N., High School Librarian, BC Books for Schools

Susan Blacklin was born near London, UK, and later moved to Canada. While living in Saskatchewan, she supported her now late ex-husband, Dr. Hans Peterson, in founding the Safe Drinking Water Foundation; together, they devoted fifteen years of their lives to bringing safe drinking water to First Nations and rural communities. Susan retired to Vancouver Island, where she now pursues her writing, painting, and gardening. Water Confidential is her first book.

Susan Blacklin's profile page

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“Dr. Hans Peterson was an ally to the nation. Our message to other First Nations Leaders is to search for those allies, not just consultants, but experts that care because they will go the distance for your people. Our message to Canadians is to be those allies because if First Nations communities thrive, so does Canada."

—Chief John Machiskinic, Yellow Quill First Nation

“An incredible story of courage, commitment, passion and adventure. Susan Blacklin and her late partner Hans Peterson shone a light on the appalling drinking water and sanitation crisis in First Nations communities and set out to right this wrong. They did not do this from some lofty high rise office tower in Ottawa or Edmonton but on the ground in the communities where people were suffering. I highly recommend this exciting and moving book.”

—Maude Barlow, social justice author and activist

“Sue has written a hard-hitting, from-the-heart description of the lengths taken, obstacles overcome, and sacrifices made, along what was an extraordinary, meandering path to establish access to the source of life in the setting of gross neglect and overt discrimination. That Hans and Sue had to undertake what they did is an indictment of Canada’s attitude to Indigenous communities, even when it comes to basic human rights. Unfortunately, the story and struggle are far from over… I (and we all should) welcome the publication of this important and very timely book, providing such a unique perspective on the true Herculean effort it has taken so far to get to where we are in safe water provision in Canada.”

—Dr. John O’Connor, family physician, and passionate health advocate, Northern Alberta

“Susan Blacklin's memoir, Water Confidential, should be required reading for all Canadians. With an inside look at how the system snuffs out innovation, this fine, thought-provoking book speaks the generally unknown truths about long-standing water injustices. Canadians should be very concerned—particularly those of us committed to real reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples. Her concerns and critical analysis also apply to many other Canadian communities—as she shows, many of the water quality problems that trouble Indigenous communities haunt many other rural water supplies without public awareness or appropriate treatment. In Water Confidential, Susan documents how the SDWF [Safe Drinking Water Foundation] was built with grit and great effort, with personal and family sacrifice. With great honesty, she shows how various levels of government and other vested interests kept it from achieving widespread acceptance. This is a grand contribution to ecological and Indigenous justice.”

—Harvey Scott, PhD, Professor Emeritus U of Alberta, Elders Council, Keepers of the Water