But despite what the advisories suggest, residents in these outports tell CBC News the public water supply is often unreliable and unusable, even when it’s boiled. In nearby St. Bride’s, just a few minutes’ drive from Branch, Ralph Strickland is caught in a perpetual battle with his taps. “It varies day by day,” he sighs. “Some days it’s really brown and muddy. If it rains the night before, don’t bother.” Stickland, 74 and a cancer survivor, gets his clean water from his cousin. It’s a twice-weekly ritual: load the empty containers into his truck, drive down the road, fill them up, drive back, lug them all inside. Between trips, he sends a lot of text messages. “I’ve been telling the MHA and that about these places,” he says, referring to Sherry Gambin-Walsh, his local member of the provincial House of Assembly. “All you have to do is put a holding tank up there, put a couple artesian wells in. I thought, you know, maybe 500,000, a million litres of water and the whole community got clean water, drinkable water. You can go and fill up your glass and take your medication with it, if they did it right.”
