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By the time Claire Cardinal received a breast cancer diagnosis, it was already at stage four.
Treatment wasn’t easy — she’d have to leave Fort Chipewyan, Alta., where she lived, and seek it elsewhere. Then there was the understated discomfort that came with chemotherapy.
“But I’m fighting for my life,” she told photojournalist Amber Bracken earlier this year. Amber had travelled to Fort Chipewyan to take portraits of residents who shared their fears — living downstream from the Alberta oilsands’ trillion-litre tailings ponds of toxic byproducts. (Although she photographed Cardinal in Edmonton, after she heard she had no treatments left.)
“Hopefully I can beat this,” Cardinal said back in April. “I want to be on this earth for another at least 10 years — just to see my grandson when they graduate and the two younger ones. Yeah. Fighting, fighting, fighting.”
Cardinal passed away on Aug. 11 from her illness.
In Fort Chip, as the locals call it, residents have long been worried about their water. Over two years ago, Imperial Oil discovered industrial wastewater leaks that were infiltrating groundwater from a mining site, and failed to tell residents about it for months.
The region has been found to have “higher than expected” cases of rare cancers, and it wasn’t until earlier this year that the federal government finally agreed to assess the toxicity of compounds found in oilsands tailings.
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