DANGEROUS CARGO

In 1939, filmmaker Richard Finnie photographed an employee of Eldorado Mining and Refining at the Port Radium mine in the Northwest Territories. The man is resting his hand on sacks of pitchblende concentrate that were rich in uranium. It’s one of dozens of images in The Bomb in the Wilderness: Photography and the Nuclear Era in Canada (UBC Press, 245 pages, $32.95) by art historian and curator John O’Brian. Uranium and plutonium from Port Radium were used in the bombs that fell on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sahtu Dene people from the village of Déline on the shore of Great Bear Lake were employed as carriers of the ore without knowing either its purpose or the dangers involved in handling the radioactive material.