[en] Ontario Hydro's Bruce Nuclear Generating Station 'B' consists of four 935 W CANDU units located on the east shore of Lake Huron in the province of Ontario, Canada. On July 25 and 26, 1989 three of the four operating units were shutdown due to boiler feedwater chemical excursions initiated by a process upset in the Water Treatment Plant that provides demineralized make-up water to all four units. The chemicals that escaped from an ion exchange vessel during a routine regeneration very quickly spread through the condensate make-up system and into the boiler feedwater systems. This resulted in boiler sulfate levels exceeding shutdown limits. A total of 260 GWH of electrical generation was unexpectedly made unavailable to the grid at a time of peak seasonal demand. This event exposed several unforeseen deficiencies and vulnerabilities in the automatic demineralized water make-up quality protection scheme, system designs, operating procedures and the ability of operating personnel to recognize and appropriately respond to such an event. The combination of these factors contributed towards turning a minor system upset into a major multi-unit shutdown. This paper provides the details of the actual event initiation in the Water Treatment Plant and describes the sequence of events that led to the eventual shutdown of three units and near shutdown of the fourth. The design inadequacies, procedural deficiencies and operating personnel responses and difficulties are described. The process of recovering from this event, the flushing out of system piping, boilers and the feedwater train is covered as well as our experiences with setting up supplemental demineralized water supplies including trucking in water and the use of rental trailer mounted demineralizing systems. System design, procedural and operational changes that have been made and that are still being worked on in response to this event are described. The latest evidence of the effect of this event on boiler tube integrity is briefly summarized. (author)