O'Connor 'restored our dignity' amid Walkerton disaster

Walkerton Inquiry commissioner Dennis O’Connor remains a beloved figure in the pretty Bruce County town that was made famous for a deadly water contamination crisis 20 years ago.

He immersed himself in the community from the start, and even moved into a rented house with his wife amid a boil water order, during the nine-month inquiry into the May 2000 E. coli town water disaster.

People in the community saw him walk to work and stop to chat along the way. By one man’s recollection, the inquiry commissioner once pushed someone’s car out of a snowy driveway. He passed his 60^thbirthday in Walkerton.

Seven people died and ultimately 3,000 were sickened (though nearly all recovered, a long-term health study would ultimately find) – in a town of fewer than 5,000, after contamination from manure washed onto a town well and into the community’s water distribution system.

The inquiry heard from former premier Mike Harris himself, whose budget cuts were blamed in part for the disaster. Lazy and deceitful practices of two inadequately trained brothers at the Walkerton PUC were exposed, as were signs of trouble missed by provincial authorities.

The inquiry’s recommendations for systemic change and professionalization of drinking water operations were adopted, transforming Ontario into a world leader in safe drinking water.

“I felt a huge responsibility to get it right,” the 78-year-old retired judge said in a recent phone interview.

He said he always felt the support of the community, where he has returned to paddle the Saugeen River. “I feel a very strong tie to Walkerton.”

He thought it was important to hold the inquiry in Walkerton, where he released his report in 2002. He guessed some 200 people attended the Walkerton arena hall that day.

“There was a full room. And I can tell you from my standpoint, it was one of the most emotional things that I have done,” O’Connor said. “I sort of almost teared up a bit.”

“Just hold this together,” he said he remembers thinking.

He didn’t mention it, but the town gave him a standing ovation. Bruce Davidson, the co-founder of Concerned Walkerton Citizens, remembers that.

Walkerton resident Bruce Davidson. (Supplied)

“He vowed to leave no stone unturned in finding answers to what had happened here and providing that roadmap to safer water,” Davidson said.

“He was a turning point for the community. He restored our dignity. He restored the integrity of policy – he was the first person that didn’t lie to us.”

For the 20^thanniversary of the disaster, O’Connor accepted an invitation to return to Walkerton to offer remarks at a commemorative event on the Mother’s Day weekend. But COVID-19 restrictions on gatherings forced Brockton to cancel it.

O’Connor said he understands why some might not want to remember the disaster.

“One family lost a 2 ½-year-old girl. Other people’s kids have grown up and been compromised from a health standpoint. So commemorating something that’s a tragedy, I guess there could be different views on that.”

The community watched the inquiry unfold by attending the hearing room or watching it on the local cable TV channel. And it was national news. It drew reporters whose presence the community came to resent.

Even before O’Connor’s inquiry began in October 2000, he began by listening to local people’s traumatic stories informally, viewing photos of loved ones who died from drinking town water and sometimes meeting privately with grief-stricken survivors, to have a strong sense of the scope of the impact.

Initially, the water problem was withheld from public health officials by members of the town’s public utilities staff, delaying a boil water advisory by days, causing 300 to 400 injuries which could have been prevented, O’Connor found.

Most of the people infected by the intestinal bug got diarrhea and became dehydrated, so people drank more of the contaminated water, not knowing what was making them sick.

The sight and sound of helicopters carrying victims to hospital in London grew common.

Brothers Stan and Frank Koebel pleaded guilty to criminal offences and were sentenced to a year in jail and nine months under house arrest respectively.

Ontario and other jurisdictions would ultimately implement some or all of O’Connor’s more than 100 recommendations to reform drinking water management.

The Walkerton Clean Water Centre, an independent government agency for training and technical support,was established on the outskirts of Walkerton as a result. O’Connor has spoken there and visited once or twice when passing through, he said.

Though personally moved by the experience, his principal aim was to conduct a dispassionate, fair and accurate examination of what happened, why it happened and find ways to prevent it from happening again, he said.

“I’ll leave it to others to judge but I did the best I could,” O’Connor said. “I devoted myself to it. I felt it was such an important thing to be involved in.”

O’Connor said he’s satisfied he produced an independent report, which gave the community answers — and was given the necessary resources by the provincial government — without political interference.

Some doubted whether conducting such an extensive inquiry in rural Ontario could even be done, given space needs and distances lawyers and many experts who helped shape the recommendations would have to travel. O’Connor decided it must be there.

“I think it was actually, at a fairly significant level, it send a good message that this is where the people were most primarily affected by this. They wanted the inquiry there,” he said.

It was members of the community who called for an inquiry, which otherwise may not have been called, he said.

And a couple of citizens’ groups, each represented by a lawyer, attended the hearings and were very helpful, including Davidson’s group, by organizing groups and individuals willing to discuss the impact of what happened to them.

The former associate chief justice of Ontario, who after Walkerton led the inquiry into Canada’s role in the rendition and torture of Maher Arar in 2004, and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2016, said the Walkerton Inquiry was “as important as anything I’d done professionally in my life, for sure.”