Life is hard: Ontario First Nation under a 29-year boil water advisory [Video]

Every other day, Derek Moonias drives 15 minutes to the airport in Neskantaga First Nation and fills his pickup truck with cases of bottled water flown in on the dime of the federal government.

The community some 450 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, Ont. – accessible only by air and a winter ice road – has the longest boil-water advisory in the country at 29 years and growing. Many in the community have never lived at a time when the water coming out of the taps was declared suitable to drink.

On this morning, Moonias, the water distribution co-ordinator, is tired. A young mother called him overnight looking for clean water to make a bottle for her baby. He dug some up from his secret cache kept just for such occasions and rushed it over.

“It’s very sad, man,” he says. “It’s depressing.”

Moonias picks up about 95 cases a flight and serves 84 homes. In addition to that, half a …