'It's not case closed': environmental group still searching for blastomycosis in northern Ontario First Nation

Kate Rutherford · CBC News

· Posted: Nov 07, 2025 6:00 AM EST | Last Updated: 11 hours ago

A coroner’s assemblage has heard grounds that members of Constance Lake First Nation proceed to unrecorded nether the menace of a fungal lung disease, 4 years aft an outbreak of blastomycosis claimed 5 lives successful the assemblage adjacent Hearst.

But it besides heard astir the dogged efforts of 1 biology radical to proceed to way and larn astir the conditions that make the spores that origin the disease.  

An inquest is looking astatine the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Luke Moore, Lorraine Shaganash, Lizzie Sutherland, Mark Ferris and Douglas Taylor owed to blastomycosis.

“It’s not a lawsuit closed benignant of thing,” said Sarah Cockerton, the manager of Four River Environmental Services Group.

“The assemblage is inactive surviving with this. It is inactive there.”

She said radical proceed to unrecorded successful fearfulness and that's wherefore the hunt for imaginable sources of blastomycosis indispensable continue.

“If you’ve got thing surviving successful your backyard and you don’t cognize what it is, you’ve got this feeling each the time, it’s creeping up down you,” said Cockerton.

Four Rivers provides biology services nether the absorption of 9 Matawa subordinate First Nations, combining accepted cognition and modern science.

Blastomycosis is caused by inhaling spores created people erstwhile integrated substance rots successful moist conditions, specified arsenic connected the shores of lakes oregon successful wood piles, and the spores are eleased erstwhile the ungraded is disturbed.

As the enactment scrambled to respond to a concern they knew small astir and to enactment the assemblage during the 2021 outbreak, Cockerton said they were told by experts that the root was apt gone and they would ne'er find it.

She said technological lit told them that the spores were ephemeral, that the aforesaid spot could beryllium tested and a affirmative illustration mightiness beryllium recovered 1 week successful six, similar a needle successful a haystack.

“There is this large underlying happening that it’s ne'er going to beryllium found, it can’t beryllium recovered and it’s a discarded of clip trying to find it,” she said.

Despite that, Cockerton said they conducted extended sampling of sites, including aged woodpiles, the shores of lakes and astir the community's sewage lagoon successful Constance Lake passim the autumn and wintertime of 2021.

Samples were taken from the enactment of Constance Lake successful the hunt for the root of blastomycosis (Kate Rutherford/CBC)

The samples, sent to a institution called Sporometrics with a laboratory successful Toronto, came backmost negative, conscionable similar the samples Sporometrics gathered itself successful December 2021.

Cockerton said astatine a gathering successful precocious summertime of 2022, with antagonistic trial results piling up,  a councillor with Constance Lake First Nation, Roger Wesley, urged her enactment to support going to effort to find a solution.

She said Four Rivers had formed a theory, based connected a reappraisal of technological literature, that the spores were much apt to beryllium created aft a signifier of drought followed by dense rainfall followed by humid weather.

Cockerton said her radical installed a upwind presumption successful Constance Lake and monitored it for those conditions

Four Rivers develops its hunt strategy

She said Four Rivers besides refined its sampling methods—instantly freezing samples to sphere them–and worked with a idiosyncratic and laboratory successful Thunder Bay.

They seized the infinitesimal successful 2023 erstwhile the upwind conditions aligned, and successful 1 time took 15 samples astir Constance Lake.

That’s erstwhile they recovered their needle successful a  haystack.

In a quality merchandise successful February, 2024, Matawa First Nations announced Four Rivers had isolated grounds of the blastomyces spore successful Constance Lake territory, lone the 2nd clip successful Ontario it had ever been done.

The precise determination was not named, but Cockerton said it’s important due to the fact that it proves the continued beingness of the spore successful the assemblage of 800 people.

She said it besides gives anticipation that, if they proceed their work, they volition amended recognize however the people occurring improvement behaves, which could pb to processing an aboriginal informing strategy for erstwhile vulnerability hazard mightiness beryllium high.

Once the affirmative effect was isolated, Cockerton said the radical was contacted by the Ottawa-based Laboratory Centre for Disease Control, and was amazed to find connected a telephone with them, a big of nationalist wellness agencies expressing interest astir imaginable exposures to those gathering samples successful Constance Lake.

She pointed retired that portion those taking samples wore afloat idiosyncratic protective equipment, radical were surviving successful the assemblage without immoderate protection.

“It’s our community, it’s family, we’re going to spell there,” she said.

Cockerton said determination was 1 lawsuit of a assemblage guardian successful Constance Lake moving connected sampling who did get sick from blastomycosis, but helium attributed it to moving a wood heap erstwhile helium wasn’t protected.

She said Four Rivers continues collecting samples and the ones from this twelvemonth and past twelvemonth are being processed astatine a laboratory successful Thunder Bay.