Sadly, I believe that canisters are the future for almost any bear habitat. There was once a day when no one purified water. I think canister use will become a similar paradigm shift in bear country.
Hopefully increasing demand will spur new technology and result in ever lighter and cheaper canisters. I won't say smaller because the current minimal dimension of about 8" is just big enough to keep the whole thing out of a bear's mouth.
Once you get used to them they're really not so bad. And they make a fair camp chair. Not to mention a washing machine.
I believe you are correct about the future of bear canisters, however I wanted to comment on your purifying water reference. It is interesting that the push for water purification and the belief that backwoods water is contaminated came about at similar times to the bottled water frenzy. People have been conditioned to believe that tap water is bad and thus it is easy to convince them the backwoods water is also bad/worse. I have come across little evidence to support either contention. In fact an email sent to water testers at Paul Smiths College in the Adirondacks regarding water being contaminated yielded an interesting response. To their knowlege no one has ever done a study investigating the water for biological contamination, the only testing is for pH levels and other non-biological measures.
edit: they do count fish and loon populations so those two biological measures are done. I was writing about biological pathogens.
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