Canada’s Role in Creating the First Atomic Bombs: Prophecy and Policy (Part 2)
by Nancy Tam

In the previous issue of WHOLifE Journal, I wrote an article about the hibaku trees which survived the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As I write this second article, I remember Kevin Newman on Global News, many years ago, giving a news report about a prophetic vision of an indigenous Elder. Beautiful drawings were shown of what the Elder had prophesized; kind of like a moving storyboard.

The Elder had awoken with a disturbing dream vision. There were large orange rocks buried deep in the centre of the earth, that were being dug up and transported by his people. The orange glowing rocks were wrapped in burlap sacks, and loaded onto canoes, and then taken over land, to gray buildings, that had chimneys with smoke going up into the sky. Whatever was being made in these gray buildings was brought to another place, flying through the sky. A powerful gray stick was made. This gray stick went into a giant metal bird that flew to another land far away, and this bird dropped the gray stick onto people that looked just like us, except their eyes were slanted the other way. The gray stick fell on these people, and there was a big explosion and fire, and blackness, and death, and a giant white mushroom cloud of smoke floated up into the sky. This was a terrible happening, it would happen sometime in the far future. 

I was struck by this prophetic vision and how it had seemingly come true through the horrific atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Soon after seeing the news report, I tried to learn more about the source, but wasn’t able to find any more information at that time. I have always wondered where this prophecy came from; it was a mystery for me. Over 20 years later, I feel I may have found the original source, a CBC archives piece titled: “Deline and the Bomb.” It’s a 2008 radio documentary about how the Dene people of the Déline First Nation community, in the Northwest Territories (N.W.T.), believe they share a responsibility for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, related to a prophetic vision by their Medicine Man. Go to audio file:  https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/from-the-cbc-archives-deline-and-the-bomb-1.3182188.

What I recall from the TV news report and the details in the old legend from the Dene people differ somewhat, but both visions are strikingly similar. They both foresee the atomic bombings of Japan. In this documentary, we hear two different perspectives of what happened with the uranium mining at Port Radium. The Dene’s narrative speaks to their belief about how Dene hunters and trappers were hired to unknowingly transport the uranium ore used in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The Dene were also not given radioactive protections, nor forewarned about the radioactive dangers and potential risks involved for serious long-term health issues and environmental impacts to their sacred lands, waters, and wildlife. This contrasts, Robert Bothwell’s expert opinion, a professor of history at the University of Toronto, that the Dene people’s relationship to the events of Hiroshima is not as strongly linked as the Dene believe it to be. The historical research and the prophetic visions are sharply juxtaposed and both sides are clearly not in agreement.

During World War II, the race to develop an atomic bomb was a top-secret military mission. Canada secretly re-started uranium mining production at the Eldorado Mining Company (a Canadian government Crown corporation) in Port Radium. Eldorado’s refinery in Port Hope, Ontario, processed the uranium ore (from Canada and the Belgian Congo) that would be used in the Manhattan Project in New Mexico, to ultimately create the first atomic bombs. Canada also contributed to the atomic bomb through the creation of the Montreal Laboratory in Quebec to develop nuclear weapons, as well as many Canadian research scientists who worked directly with Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project. 

In August of 1998, the Dene people sent a small delegation to Japan to apologize to the hibakusha (survivors of the atomic bombings) for their unintended involvement in the creation of the atomic bombs and they asked for forgiveness. Cindy Gilday played a major role in this apology and as an environmental and Indigenous rights activist, she still has many concerns about how uranium mining may have affected the Déline village’s health and the lands, waters, and wildlife, along the routes used to transport the uranium ore. For example, it is believed that over one million tons of radioactive uranium and radium tailings have been dumped into Great Bear Lake.

From a public health and ecological perspective, the radioactive waste left behind after the Eldorado uranium mine was closed in the 1960s, and the ensuing impacts, continues to reverberate into the present day for the Dene people and requires ongoing monitoring far into the future. Remediation activities undertaken by the federal government were first done in 1982, and then after more lobbying, a second major cleanup was completed in 2007, to update the former uranium mine to modern standards. There are still many questions as to what is needed for safe and effective nuclear radioactive waste management. Does humankind know how to properly manage this powerful and dangerous radioactive element, over the course of its full life cycle? In the era after the Cold War, referred to as the Second Nuclear Age, what is the best path forward with current policy and practices regarding uranium mining in Canada and around the world?

It is a tragic legacy that has befallen the Dene people and their sacred lands, waters, as well as their more than human relations; the Canadian government and the mining companies never told the Dene what they were mining, nor what it would be used for. In the Dene people’s apology to Japan, they said that had they known, they would not have participated. 

The next article will look at uranium mining in Saskatchewan, why we should all test radon gas levels in our homes and hibaku trees as a source of healing.

Nancy Tam is a registered social worker specializing in holistic wellness from a Taoist totality perspective. Her therapeutic approach is rooted in the Dreambody channel of process-oriented psychology (POP), and working with your active imagination, dreams (waking and night), mirroring, deep democracy, and personal life myths to cultivate inner and outer peace. She enjoys facilitating workshops about Dreambody POP, Non-Violent Communication, and Constellations Homeopathy. For more info about Nancy’s peace activism work via the Positive Peace Umbrella Project, her Kimono Wings Work-in-Progress, in remembrance and mourning of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and upcoming workshops, please email: positivepeaceup@gmail.com.