This Is A Tough One But......

....I don't see how we can say no when we have already gone so far to the left in appeasing groups under guise of being politically correct. The fact that our lakes and rivers and creeks are not the pristine places we would like or that people "pollute" these waterways on a daily basis makes the issue more difficult to resolve.

Credit River ritual raises ripple in Peel
Local Hindu leaders lobbying for sacred place to scatter ashes, make offerings
March 03, 2007
Phinjo Gombu
STAFF REPORTER

Adrienne Duff noticed them three years ago, drifting in a Brampton branch of the Credit River.

Clusters of flowers, plastic statues, coconuts – some still wrapped in plastic – even jewellery and money.

"We started receiving calls from landowners, not just on Fletcher's Creek but also in the main Credit area," said Duff, a watershed-monitoring specialist with Credit Valley Conservation.

The mystery was traced to devout Hindus who were making river offerings as a means of conveying blessings, part of their traditional worship.

Worried about the potential environmental impact, the conservation agency, along with Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, which is seeing similar things, began the delicate task of finding a compromise.

Priests and temple elders promised to help by urging community members to limit their offerings to small amounts of flowers.

But that was only part of it.

Devout Hindus hope their cremated remains will be dispersed in moving water. The ritual, a symbolic cleansing of the body, is being quietly practised within a GTA Hindu community of 200,000, as of the 2001 census, that is growing rapidly.

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