CARBONEAR, N.L. — "Late physicist would be happy Carbonear honours his spirit"...(Compass, Oct. 9)
Speak for yourself...not for me!
The Chalk River nuclear facility where this man spent his life time working, and referred to in an earlier letter to the Compass, was built for military purposes and opened in 1945, same year as the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Chalk River suffered two terrible nuclear accidents as a result of bad decisions by its operators. It was the first civil nuclear accident in the history of nuclear energy.
More than 1,000 men were involved in the clean-up operations in Chalk River which is next to Ottawa and empties into the Ottawa River.
No medical follow-up was ever done to see if the men involved in the clean-up showed a higher than normal incidence of cancer.
The Main Brook in Carbonear may never become a disaster in the style of Chalk River or Chernobyl,1986. However, people pollution in time, will render our beloved Main Brook sterile, barren and its banks along its edge no longer green.
Leave the Main Brook alone! That is all I am saying. Go make your walking trails elsewhere, such as on the old 1913 adjacent, and abandoned railway track to Bay de Verde — if it is more walking trails that you want...and, go call them after the Carbonear fairies known to linger around Fairy Hill in that area of Carbonear.
I am sure that Old Man River would not wish to go down in history as a supporter of a project that is so wrong, given that this trail project erroneously, and ironically honours someone for what some may call great personal achievements, while what others may call, a great personal tragic failure, both for themselves and humanity.
Green peace...Green space...Green river, may you roll on forever...
Bill Barry
Carbonear
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