Dangers of mining clear to all
"A daughter of Elliot Lake remembers" was based on fact and not the over emotional rants of the uranium investors.an elitist who wants to control us
As always, the elitists all stand together when it comes to the touchy problem of real progress in
Linda Harvey is a retired family physician living and uranium mining
The tortured future of Elliot Lake – by Lloyd Tataryn (Saturday Night, June, 1976)
This article was orginally published in Saturday Night (a Canadian general interest magazine that ceased publication in 2005) in the June, 1976 issue.
His voice broke in mid sentence. His eyes were red-rimmed and he fought back tears.
“I could be healthy, still workin. Now I have dust plus cancer. And the family is all upside down. Dad’s gonna die maybe today, maybe tomorrow, we don’t know.” His voice broke once again. “And that’s the way it looks like. It’s bad. It’s very bad for a family. Family’s more hurt than me. Cryin’, you know. Disaster.”
It was the type of interview that makes a documentary a success. It was also the type of interview that makes a journalist fell parasitic. One is pleased with having captured an extremely moving moment on tape. But one also feels exploitative for having the presumption to ask a dying man to spill his emotions into your microphone.
Here was a forty-four-year-old man who had spent fifteen years digging and blasting a living in the Elliot Lake uranium miners in northern Ontario. The work was back breaking, the kind of work that makes a man tough and hard. Miners a proud of the strong, vigorous image they project. They don’t cry in public. They don’t cry, that is, unless they are overwhelmed by events and their defences have been destroyed.
Joe Zuljan died in February, 1975, nine months after his words were broadcast by the CBC.
According to an Ontario government study, Elliot Lake miners are dying of cancer at more than three times the ordinary rate. Hundreds more have either developed the crippling lung disease silicosis, or show definite signs of doing so. The reason is that the Elliot Lake mines have repeatedly registered unsafe levels of silica dust and radiation.
Mary Zuljan, Joe Zuljan’s widow, is angry and bitter. “Joe worked fifteen years and three months in Denison Mines,” she says. “He never missed a shift without a good reason. He never was sick he took sick in the mines.”
Gradually the Elliot Lake miners’ plight became a media event. For a brief period, debilitated miners like Joe Zuljan, Gus Frobel, Aldo Pico, Charlie Guite, Albino Boucos, and Garry Toner were prominent figures in television documentaries, national newscasts, and feature articles. Working conditions in the mines became a scandal.
In order to offset the unwelcome publicity, the Ontario government launched an investigation into health and safety in Ontario mines. The media eventually forgot about the miners, and life in Elliot Lake returned to normal. The union hated the companies. The companies hated the union. The widows buried the disease-wracked bodies of their husbands and fatherless families began adjusting to a life on compensation.
And I began receiving telephone calls from irate Elliot Lake citizens. It soon became evident that Elliot Lake was severely split over the miners’ health issue. I was called a “dupe of the union.” Some callers suggested I was part of a “Communist conspiracy.” Others attached the credibility of the “dying miners” I interviewed, sanctimoniously pointing out that many of these men had torrid pasts as “drinkers and winchers.” Still others accused me of “killing the town by giving it bad publicity.”
But one caller was more rational. She said: “The media will never understand the sensitivity of those of us who live here. Some of us have suffered through a great deal of hardship to get this town on its feet and we resent muck-raking outsiders coming in and ruining all our efforts to make Elliot Lake a stable community.”
She had a point. People who have never lived in a single-industry area fail to appreciate the dependency syndrome that is part of these areas. One industry not only dominates the economy of the community, it also permeates the psychology of the people who live in its shadow. The community, after all, exists because of the industry. Furthermore, industry policies affect the town’s environment, its physical layout, the social hierarchy of the community, and the way citizens react to a crisis. Whenever their economic overlord is attached for any reason, the community instinctively rallies around the company.
But if this holds true for the hundreds of single-industry towns freckling the face of Canada, it’s doubly true for Elliot Lake. In order to understand the volatile atmosphere the miners’ health issue kindled in Elliot Lake, one has to appreciate the history of the town – a history of extreme boom and equally extreme bust.
“The conditions in Elliot Lake are not the best conditions to work in to survive a normal life span. If anybody does not like to go to the hospital with lung cancer, he should have a very close look at the Elliot Lake situation before he signs on as an employee of either one of the companies. We believe that the companies should not have the right to expose people to conditions that will cause bodily harm. There has to be a clean-up programme before we can definitely advise people to seek employment in Elliot Lake.” (Paul Falkowski, United Steel Workers of America, Environmental Representative – June 1976)
The uranium miners there are dying of cancer at three times the normal rate. But what can a single-industry town do about it? Close down? Or live with death?His voice broke in mid sentence. His eyes were red-rimmed and he fought back tears.
“I could be healthy, still workin. Now I have dust plus cancer. And the family is all upside down. Dad’s gonna die maybe today, maybe tomorrow, we don’t know.” His voice broke once again. “And that’s the way it looks like. It’s bad. It’s very bad for a family. Family’s more hurt than me. Cryin’, you know. Disaster.”
It was the type of interview that makes a documentary a success. It was also the type of interview that makes a journalist fell parasitic. One is pleased with having captured an extremely moving moment on tape. But one also feels exploitative for having the presumption to ask a dying man to spill his emotions into your microphone.
Here was a forty-four-year-old man who had spent fifteen years digging and blasting a living in the Elliot Lake uranium miners in northern Ontario. The work was back breaking, the kind of work that makes a man tough and hard. Miners a proud of the strong, vigorous image they project. They don’t cry in public. They don’t cry, that is, unless they are overwhelmed by events and their defences have been destroyed.
Joe Zuljan died in February, 1975, nine months after his words were broadcast by the CBC.
According to an Ontario government study, Elliot Lake miners are dying of cancer at more than three times the ordinary rate. Hundreds more have either developed the crippling lung disease silicosis, or show definite signs of doing so. The reason is that the Elliot Lake mines have repeatedly registered unsafe levels of silica dust and radiation.
Mary Zuljan, Joe Zuljan’s widow, is angry and bitter. “Joe worked fifteen years and three months in Denison Mines,” she says. “He never missed a shift without a good reason. He never was sick he took sick in the mines.”
Gradually the Elliot Lake miners’ plight became a media event. For a brief period, debilitated miners like Joe Zuljan, Gus Frobel, Aldo Pico, Charlie Guite, Albino Boucos, and Garry Toner were prominent figures in television documentaries, national newscasts, and feature articles. Working conditions in the mines became a scandal.
In order to offset the unwelcome publicity, the Ontario government launched an investigation into health and safety in Ontario mines. The media eventually forgot about the miners, and life in Elliot Lake returned to normal. The union hated the companies. The companies hated the union. The widows buried the disease-wracked bodies of their husbands and fatherless families began adjusting to a life on compensation.
And I began receiving telephone calls from irate Elliot Lake citizens. It soon became evident that Elliot Lake was severely split over the miners’ health issue. I was called a “dupe of the union.” Some callers suggested I was part of a “Communist conspiracy.” Others attached the credibility of the “dying miners” I interviewed, sanctimoniously pointing out that many of these men had torrid pasts as “drinkers and winchers.” Still others accused me of “killing the town by giving it bad publicity.”
But one caller was more rational. She said: “The media will never understand the sensitivity of those of us who live here. Some of us have suffered through a great deal of hardship to get this town on its feet and we resent muck-raking outsiders coming in and ruining all our efforts to make Elliot Lake a stable community.”
She had a point. People who have never lived in a single-industry area fail to appreciate the dependency syndrome that is part of these areas. One industry not only dominates the economy of the community, it also permeates the psychology of the people who live in its shadow. The community, after all, exists because of the industry. Furthermore, industry policies affect the town’s environment, its physical layout, the social hierarchy of the community, and the way citizens react to a crisis. Whenever their economic overlord is attached for any reason, the community instinctively rallies around the company.
But if this holds true for the hundreds of single-industry towns freckling the face of Canada, it’s doubly true for Elliot Lake. In order to understand the volatile atmosphere the miners’ health issue kindled in Elliot Lake, one has to appreciate the history of the town – a history of extreme boom and equally extreme bust.
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Uranium miners in Elliot Lake became alarmed about the high incidence of lung cancer and silicosis, and they went on strike over health and safety conditions.
www.worksmartontario.gov.on.ca
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virtualwalk.ca
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www.ccamu.ca
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www.lakemississippi.ca
Citizhttp://www.ontla.on.ca/library/repository/mon/25002/123102.pdfens’ Inquiry on th
Community Coalition Against Mining
Uranium (CCAMU)
e Impacts
of the Uranium Cycle
