Confronting our nuclear shadow
Confronting our nuclear shadow
At Cape Breton University last October, during a federal election panel on climate change, Peace Quest Cape Breton asked the three candidates present from the Sydney-Victoria riding whether, given the existential threat to the planet posed by nuclear weapons, Canada should sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), popularly known as the ‘Ban Treaty' adopted by 122 states at the UN General Assembly in 2017.
As we expected, the Green and NDP candidates (Lois Foster and Jodi McDavid) enthusiastically said Yes. So, to our surprise, did the Liberal candidate, now-MP Jaime Battiste, despite the Trudeau Government's opposition to the Treaty. Conservative candidate Eddie Orrell did not attend the meeting.
There was, in truth, an element of confusion in the audience. What did the defining issue of the 21st century, global warming, have to do with Cold War threats of Armageddon? And what difference would Canada's signature make?
“Don't they know,” as someone whispered to a Peace Quest supporter, “we don't have any nuclear weapons?”
Well, we did know that; as we knew that as a member of the world's only nuclear-armed alliance, NATO, Canada continues to claim dependence on nuclear weapons for its security, participating in a Nuclear Planning Group (how many Canadians know that?) reviewing options for a first-strike attack.
We also knew that, in addition to killing millions in minutes, and millions more from radiation sickness, such a strike would cause, to quote philosopher Elaine Scarry, a “far more condensed catastrophe” than global warming: ‘global cooling', in fact, lofting soot from irradiated cities to block the sun, triggering famine more lethal than fall-out.
As recent major studies detail, even a ‘limited' nuclear exchange, involving 100 or less of the 14,000 ‘nukes' on Earth today, would cause “climate change at a supersonic rate,” in the vivid phrase of former United States nuclear negotiator Thomas Countryman. And as the world's leading medical authorities have been warning for years, no mitigation of a ‘nuclear pandemic' is possible, no quarantine or lockdown any help, no recovery conceivable.
And after TPNW was adopted, the last word went to Setsuko Thurlow, a 13-year-old witness to the beginning of the end of the world in Hiroshima, who joyfully described the ban as “the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons.”
Thurlow's delight was tempered with dismay that Canada, her adopted homeland since the 1950s, boycotted the negotiations under pressure (as leaked documents show) from Washington. And for the last four years, her prime minister has refused to meet her, perhaps fearful of hearing firsthand not just her harrowing account but her argument that, as she wrote in The Toronto Star in 2017, “given Canada's direct involvement in development of the atomic bomb,” its rejection of the ban was “a crime against humanity.”
So ‘direct' was this ‘involvement,' in fact, that the atomic bombs dropped on Japan 75 years ago should be acknowledged as the progeny of an unholy colonial trinity: America, Canada, and (‘mother' to both) Britain. Canada supplied not only scientists and facilities, but heavy water for reactors and, most crucially, 900 tons of uranium from the ‘Port Radium' mine on Dene territory in the Northwest Territories, enriched to ‘weapons grade'– together with 1,000+ tons of uranium from the Belgian Congo – at Port Hope, Ont.
Until the 1980s, the Dene had no idea the ore taken from their territory – at terrible cost to their health and environment – was used to pulverize Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When they found out, they sent a delegation to Hiroshima to apologize for their unwitting role in the atrocities.
On July 9 this year, Thurlow again knocked at the PM's locked door, “respectfully requesting” he “acknowledge Canada's involvement in and contributions to the two atomic bombings and issue a statement of regret on behalf of the Canadian government for the immense deaths and suffering caused by the atom bombs.” After which, she suggests, he should announce – perhaps after apologizing to the Dene as well? – his intention to sign the Ban Treaty.
On July 14, the Cape Breton Regional Municipality – a member of the global ‘Mayors for Peace' coalition since 2013 – issued a Proclamation declaring Aug. 6 ‘Hiroshima Memorial Day,' a solemn opportunity “to renew our commitment to ensuring freedom from the threat posed by nuclear weapons, here and everywhere.”
Without perhaps knowing the full, sordid history of Canada's atomic age, mayor and council understand that simply ‘not having' the Bomb is no defence against its menace. All countries, at every level of political leadership, must actively strive for a nuclear-free world. But in doing so, this country would be working to eliminate an evil it helped to create.