The Poisoned Well

I smelled fuel in my tap water eight days after a few people posted on the Iqaluit PSA Facebook page that something was wrong. It was a Sunday afternoon in early October, and I was getting ready for a two-hour hike along the Apex Trail. As I filled my Nalgene bottle, I caught a distinct, nauseating odour. A rush of anxiety came over me. I thought of my friends who had been sick for days but couldn’t figure out why. I thought of the headaches I’d been having. I thought back to every sip of water I had taken over the past two weeks, to the pizza dough I had made, to the vegetables I had steamed. I thought back to the showers I had taken and the clothes I had washed. And to the puppy I had dog-sat: a lovable mongrel who would not take a single lick from the bowl I put out for him.

Two days later, on the evening when workers located an underground tank at the treatment facility that’s...