Not really. The U.S. Forest Service in California began issuing water quality warnings for the backcountry--specific to giardia--in the early '80s, easily a decade or more before the bottled water craze. It took a long time for the concept and the marketplace to gel. Early filters were very clunky and a lot were from the cottage industry, not the big makers we have today. Other than that there were iodine and boiling. Of course since then, effective marketing has really increased the sense of need on the part of the consumer--warranted or not. Two big reasons remote water quality issues got traction were the re-authorization of the Clean Water Act, which added regulation of small and seasonal water systems, and concerns about people with immuno-supression diseases.
I note this a someone who used to hike with a Sierra cup clipped to my pack so I could drink from streams I crossed in the Cascades.
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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