‘This case is not closed’: Environmental group still searching for blastomycosis in northern Ontario First Nation

A coroner’s jury has heard testimony that members of Constance Lake First Nation are living at risk of fungal lung disease, four years after an outbreak of blastomycosis took the lives of five people in the community near Hurst.

But it also heard about the Herculean efforts of an environmental group that continues to track and learn about the conditions that produce the spores that cause disease.

An investigation is looking into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Luke Moore, Lorraine Shaughnessy, Lizzie Sutherland, Mark Ferriss and Douglas Taylor due to blastomycosis.

“This is by no means a case closure,” said Sarah Cockerton, manager of Four Rivers Environmental Services Group.

“The community is still living with it. It’s still there.”

He said that people are living in fear and hence the search for possible sources of blastomycosis should continue.

“If something lives in your backyard and you don’t know what it is, you have this feeling all the time, it’s creeping up on you,” Cockerton said.

Four Rivers provides environmental services under the direction of nine Matawa member First Nations, combining traditional knowledge and modern science.

Blastomycosis is caused by the inhalation of naturally occurring spores formed when organic matter rots in moist conditions, such as on the shores of lakes or in wood piles, and the spores are released when the soil is disturbed.

As the organization struggled to respond to a situation they knew little about and to support the community during the 2021 outbreak, Cockerton said she was told by experts that the source was likely gone and they would never be able to find it.

He said the scientific literature told him that the spores were short-lived, a single location could be tested and, like a needle in a haystack, a positive sample could be found in one week out of six.

“The big underlying assumption is that it will never be found, it cannot be found and trying to find it is a waste of time,” he said.

Despite this, Cockerton said they conducted extensive sampling of sites during the autumn and winter of 2021, including old wood piles, lakebeds and the community’s sewage lagoon at Lake Constance.

Samples sent to Sporometrics, a Toronto-based company, came back negative, as did samples Sporometrics itself collected in December 2021.

Cockerton said that at a meeting in the late summer of 2022, as negative test results mounted, Roger Wesley, a councilor with Constance Lake First Nation, urged his organization to continue trying to find a solution.

He said Fore River formed a theory based on a review of the scientific literature that spores are more likely to form after a pattern of drought followed by heavy rains and then wet weather.

Cockerton said his group set up a weather station at Lake Constance and monitored conditions there.

Four Rivers develops its search strategy

He said Fore River also refined its sampling methods – freezing the samples immediately to preserve them – and worked with a scientist and laboratory in Thunder Bay.

They seized the moment in 2023 when weather conditions became favourable, and took 15 samples in one day around Lake Constance.

Then he found his needle in the haystack.

one in News release In February, 2024, the Mattawa First Nations announced that there was isolated evidence of Blastomyces spores in the Constance Lake area near Fore River, only the second time this had been done in Ontario.

The exact location was not named, but Cockerton said it was significant because it proved the continued existence of the spore in the community of 800 people.

He said it also gives hope that, if they continue their work, they will better understand how the naturally occurring phenomenon behaves, allowing early warning systems to be developed when exposure risks are high.

This is our community. This is family. we are going there-Sarah Cockerton, Four Rivers Environmental Services

Once the positive results were isolated, Cockerton said the group was contacted by the Ottawa-based Centers for Disease Control laboratory, and he was surprised to see that multiple public health agencies on the call with him were expressing concerns about the potential risk to those collecting samples at Constance Lake.

He pointed out that while those taking samples were wearing full personal protective equipment, people were living in the community without any protection.

“This is our community, this is family, we’re going to be there,” she said.

Cockerton said there was a case of a community steward at Lake Constance who was working on sampling who became ill with blastomycosis, but he attributed this to moving a pile of wood when it was not protected.

He said Fore River is continuing to collect samples and samples from this year and last year are being processed at a lab in Thunder Bay.