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Canada and the Atom Bomb Photo Exhibition at Toronto City Hall.

TORONTO — The Hiroshima Nagasaki Day Coalition (HNDC) organized a photo exhibition documenting the Canadian government’s participation in the American Manhattan Project, which developed the atom bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

The exhibition is open to the public in the Toronto City Hall Rotunda from Aug. 2 to 4 and 6 to 8. The exhibition precedes the HNDC’s Aug. 6 commemoration at the City Hall Peace Garden.

This year’s commemoration theme is “Now is the Time: Canada Sign the Ban Treaty!” Guest speakers will be Setsuko Thurlow and Rooj Ali. Benetick Kabua Maddison, Director of the Marshallese Educational Initiative, and Dr. Takashi Hiraoka, Mayor of Hiroshima (1991-1999), will make special presentations by video. Dr. Seiichi Ariga will perform a commemorative musical piece for Hiroshima.

In the city hall photo exhibition, images from the Northwest Territories Archives and Library and Archives Canada reveal how the Eldorado Mining and Refining Company extracted uranium ore at Great Bear Lake in the 1930s and shipped the ore to its refinery in Port Hope, Ont., for sale to the Americans.

Images by Montreal photographer Robert Del Tredici focus on the Dene hunters and trappers at Great Bear Lake, who were hired by Eldorado to carry the 100-pound sacks of radioactive ore on their backs for loading onto barges that transported the ore to Port Hope. Many of them subsequently died of cancer, transforming their small community of Deline into a village of widows.

In August 1998, Del Tredici travelled with a delegation of Dene to Hiroshima, where they expressed their regret at the “Hibakusha of the World” conference that uranium from their territory had been used to destroy the two Japanese cities.

Prime Minister Mackenzie King hosted President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Quebec City in August 1943, where they agreed to have Canada participate in the production of the atom bomb. King’s close friendship with Churchill and Roosevelt resulted in the complete integration of Canada within the U.S. Manhattan Project at the highest political and organizational level.

The photo exhibit includes images showing the efforts of peace activists, including Setsuko Thurlow. Above is a photo of Toronto city council and then mayor, John Tory, recognizing Setsuko’s peace leadership and accepting of the Nobel Peace Prize at a city council meeting on Nov. 7, 2017.

The exhibition highlights this participation by the Canadian government, scientists, industry, and nuclear research laboratories. Posters provided by the Hiroshima Peace Museum show the terrible deaths and destruction in the two bombed cities.

The exhibition includes five images by Yoshito Matsushige, the only photographer who took pictures in Hiroshima the day the atom bomb exploded overhead. He could not bear to take more than five photographs that day, although he had with him enough film for twenty-four exposures.

The “Canada and the Atom Bomb” exhibition concludes with photographs showing the efforts by peace activists, including Setsuko Thurlow, to persuade Toronto City Council to preserve the Peace Garden at City Hall and to participate actively in the worldwide movement to abolish nuclear weapons.

Images by the Toronto photographer Michael Chambers capture the rededication of the Peace Garden in 2016. Setsuko Thurlow was honoured by Mayor John Tory and Toronto City Council for her peace leadership the following year.

The City Council reaffirmed Toronto as a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone and called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to have Canada sign and ratify the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Thurlow accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) in Oslo, Norway, on Dec. 10, 2017, along with Beatrice Fihn, executive director of ICAN. The Nobel Peace Prize recognized the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, endorsed by 122 countries (but not Canada) at the United Nations in July 2017.

Further information about the two August events can be found on the Hiroshima Nagasaki Day Coalition website, www.hiroshimadaycoalition.ca.

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The Canada and the Atom Bomb photo exhibition is now available on the Toronto Metropolitan University’s website here.