Canada's worst E.coli outbreak
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 22 May 2026
⏱️ 10 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
In 2000, contaminated drinking water in the small Canadian town of Walkerton triggered one of the country’s worst public health disasters.
Heavy rainfall washed E. coli bacteria into the town’s water supply, but failures in testing and reporting meant residents continued to drink the water. Seven people died and thousands fell ill.
Megan Lawton speaks to resident Bruce Davidson who experienced the crisis firsthand.
Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by and curious about the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there.
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(Photo: A sign stating the water is find, on Knights of Colombus hall just outside of Walkerton, 2000. Credit: Peter Power/via Getty)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:10.2 | Hello, welcome to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service with me, Megan Lawton. |
| 0:17.2 | And from the year 2000, I'm bringing you the story of Canada's worst ever e-coli contamination. |
| 0:24.2 | I found myself standing in the backyard holding my nine-year-old son, who is, weeping uncontrollably, |
| 0:31.9 | as he's looking across the park and watching one of many air ambulance helicopters take his friend away. |
| 0:40.8 | It's a spring morning in the town of Walkerton in Ontario, and local resident Bruce Davidson |
| 0:46.3 | is consoling his son. |
| 0:48.8 | And he said through his tears, he said, Dad, is he going to die? |
| 0:56.5 | And what do you say to your son when that's the fourth person just on your street to be here lifted? And a child has already died. |
| 1:03.0 | A few days earlier, unusually heavy rain had swept through the town, washing cattle manure |
| 1:08.6 | into the water system. Residents didn't know it yet, |
| 1:12.5 | but their drinking water was contaminated with a type of bacteria called E. coli. Something as |
| 1:18.8 | ordinary as a glass of tap water had become deadly. In a town of 5,000 people, more than 2,000 would |
| 1:26.7 | fall ill. At least seven would die. |
| 1:30.1 | In the early days, as officials tried to understand what was happening, some explanations |
| 1:34.7 | focused on the unusually heavy rain. |
| 1:37.8 | Well, lots of towns experience heavy rains and people don't die from contaminated water. |
| 1:43.2 | But this wasn't just about rain. |
| 1:45.8 | Instead, a water system that failed at almost every level and critical information that |
| 1:51.5 | wasn't properly disclosed. |
| 1:53.5 | The event would change water safety across Canada forever. |
| 1:58.9 | To understand how we got to that point, we need to go back before their helicopters |
... |
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