When Stella was told she couldn't swim in her back yard river because hundreds of houses flushed their raw sewage into it she decided to try to do something about the issue. This is the true story of Stella's astonishingly successful grade six science project to clean up the LaHave River.
Stella Bowles was a Grade 6 Nova Scotia student when she turned environmental activist to campaign against sewage pipes draining straight into the LaHave River. This is the inspirational first person account of Stella's Grade 6 science fair project which caught the eyes of the media, the public and government leaders propelling her into the limelight.
Stella details her two and a half year fight to clean up the river, winning numerous awards for her environmental activism along the way. She succeeds in shaming three levels of government and rallying supporters into funding a $15.7 million cleanup. Today, she continues to campaign for cleaner water and demonstrates to other children how to test water quality in their own back yards, and how to take action if they find their water is polluted too.
Stella's story will motivate readers to engage in local environmental activism. She demonstrates that doing what's right has no age barriers.
About the Authors
Anne Laurel Carter Stella Bowles
ANNE LAUREL CARTER is an author. Her eighteen books have been inspired by something she felt needed telling, either from her experience, her children's or someone she'd met. She divides her year, writing and teaching, between Toronto and Nova Scotia where Anne is a neighbour of Stella Bowles.
STELLA BOWLES has been presented with numerous awards for environmental activism, including being named one of Canada's Top 25 Environmentalists Under 25 in 2017. She is a 13 year old junior high school student living in Upper LaHave, Nova Scotia. She collaborated with author Anne Laurel Carter to put her story into book form.
Reviews
"The collaboration started from a sign...But it was that, that led Carter to the author of the sign, student activist/community scientist Stella Bowles. Carter attended presentations Bowles made about straight pipes taking household waste, or "poop" as Bowles called it, into the river. Bowles' activism over the straight pipes is succeeding in cleaning up the LaHave River, through a tri-government program to replace the pipes with septic systems."
