My article on Vancouver’s chlorination controversy during the Second World War has now been published online on the Journal of Historical Geography website.  “Debating water purity and expertise: the chlorination controversy in Vancouver during the Second World War” examines how chlorination was imposed on Vancouver by the federal government as a war measure and how local authorities resisted and sought to defend what they saw as the water’s purity.  The debate provoked wide public interest as well as amazing claims about water testing, the insufferable advice of experts and the outrageous authority of Ottawa in Vancouver’s local affairs. At the end of the war, chlorination equipment was unplugged, and local power reasserted.  Chlorination returned in the late 1940s with less notice, but the chlorination controversy arguably laid the terms for subsequent fights over whether or not to fluoridate Vancouver’s water supply (spoiler: it never happened).