It is not a pretty story. Canadians at large only learned about it in February. And they want to know how it happened, when it started, who knew about it, when they knew about it, and why there was a "conspiracy of silence" to keep it quiet.

Abuse of taxpayers' money? If only it were so simple. This is worse. People's lives were at stake. People were poisoned. People died.

The story has all the elements of an Erin Brockavitch movie. Only now is it coming to light.

For fifty years the residents of the town of Shannon in the Province of Québec had been drinking water laced with the cancer-causing chemical trichloroethylene, commonly called TCE, all the time unaware of the fact.

The safe limit set by Health Canada for TCE is 50 parts per billion (ppb) in drinking water. The water being drunk by the residents of Shannon contained 850 parts per billion, a huge seventeen times the safety limit.

It was only by accident that the townspeople discovered the high level of TCE in their drinking water. That was in December 2000.

Those blamed for the high concentration of TCE included the federal Department of Defence, which had used the chemical to clean munitions at it nearby Valcartier base, and the Québec engineering firm SNC Lavalin Inc.

On May 5, 2001, the matter was raised in the House of Commons, at which time the then Minister of National Defence stated: "We have entered into a very substantial expenditure of money, over $2 million, to try to get to the bottom of what is causing the problem and to find ways of remedying it."

Three years later the town of Shannon is suing both the Department and the firm. It is asking for $41 million for a new aqueduct system, $15 million in punitive damages, and has launched a class action suit on behalf of some 2,000 present and former residents, including both living and dead.

When the story broke, the town's name Shannon was of natural interest to a web site linking Canada and Ireland.

According to a Québec government tourism website, the town merits the briefest of mentions. It says "Shannon used to be an Irish community."

It was at Grosse-Île in 1994, when the President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, attended the ceremony designating the island a National Historic Site, that the existence of Shannon first came to the attention of the present writer. Descendants of Irish emigrants to Canada attended the event from locales across Canada and the United States. Two ladies from Shannon, Québec, were among them, proudly Canadian, proudly Irish.

They related that among Shannon's (population 4,000) many claims to fame was that it was the birthplace of the legendary U.S. Marshall, Bat Masterson, of old Wild West fame.

The story of Bat Masterson has become legendary. Born on November 24, 1853, and christened Bartholomew, at age 19 he left Canada and headed to the American west.

At age 23 he became Deputy Marshal to Wyatt Earp in Dodge City, and soon earned a reputation as one of the greatest law men in the West.

His services were sought by many communities bent on seeking the establishment of law and order to protect their citizens. Among the posts he held were sheriff of Ford County and Deputy Marshal in Wrangell, Alaska.

Teddy Roosevelt, President of the United States, appointed him a US District Marshal in New York State in 1905. By then Masterson was 52, and two years later he retired from active duty.

He accepted a job as sports writer on the New York Morning Telegraph, and died, "with his boots on", at his sports desk in 1921.

Shannon is proud of his story to this day. We wish it well in its present fight.

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