On this day in Canadian history
By Rev. Eric Strachan
Saturday, May 16, 2015 3:53:18 EDT PM
Although science and technology open up boundless opportunities, they also present great perils because Satan employs these marvelous discoveries to His great advantage. JAMES E. FAUST
It was on this day, May 16, back in 1930, 85 years ago that Gilbert Labine, a 40-year-old avid prospector, discovered pitchblende at Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories.
Labine, who was born in Westmeath in Renfrew County, Ontario, in 1890, had first seen the brownish-black mineral ore in the hands of a lecturer when he was 17, and as he uncovered the rare shining mineral in the wilderness around the great lake that day, he knew as he recalled the lecture 23 years previous that he had discovered the rare ore from which comes radium and uranium. Such discoveries as James E. Faust once noted, have amazing potential for good, but the same unlimited potential for peril.
Modern technology has given us the Internet with all its incredible ability to accomplish good, but with it has come a proliferation of pornography, hacking, cyberbullying and the current ISIS recruitment. Modern science has produced many wonder drugs that cure, ease pain and sustain life, but the availability of the same drugs have led many to overdose, commit suicide and date rape. For certain, virtually every new discovery has the power to be used for either good or evil, and on that day back in 1930 Labine had absolutely no idea what he held in his hands or what it would be used for in the hands of others in the days ahead.
Uranium of course has many uses. It is used in glass and ceramics, used as ballast in boats, material for armour and of course for nuclear energy, but it is from this same rich ore that there comes the refined product that creates nuclear reactions, the splitting of the atom, the release of extraordinary energy and the atomic bomb. Not long after Labine’s discovery he and his brother Charles opened up the Eldorado uranium mine at Great Bear Lake, employing mostly the Dene (pronounced DEN-ay) people, an aboriginal group living in the Northwest Territories. This was followed soon after with the opening of a refinery in Port Hope, Ont. where both radium and uranium were produced.
As the world moved into the late ’30s it became known to many that German scientists were busily engaged in attempting to build an atomic bomb, and as a counter measure the race for the bomb began with the United States government engaging its own scientists in what was called ‘The Manhattan Project“. In essence the project’s chief aim was to produce an atomic bomb and with so much uranium required for its production and required quickly, the Americans came North to Canada to buy the much needed resource. But on Dec. 7, 1941 something happened that caught the United States by complete surprise, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the American naval base in Hawaii, with bombers, fighter planes and submarines, and completely devastated the American navy. The Americans were therefore thrust into the Second World War, the massive loss of life at Pearl Harbour and the blow to the nation’s pride and patriotism demanded some sort of retaliatory response, an eye for an eye. While the war with Japan continued scientific research in The Manhattan Project was moving along.
Meanwhile in 1944 Eldorado Mines became a Crown Corporation now owned by the Canadian government. It was in July of 1945 that American scientists believed the day had come for them to test the atomic bomb at Los Alamos in New Mexico. History records that on that day, July 16, Robert Oppenheimer the American physicist who oversaw the project and the development of the bomb remarked as he saw the characteristic mushroom cloud, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of the worlds. Now we are all sons of bitches.”
The intensity of the light dispersed from the detonation was so strong that day that a blind girl saw the flash 120 miles away. It took the United States less than a month to respond to Japanese aggression and the ignominy of Pearl Harbor. On Aug. 6, 1945 the monster of the atomic bomb was let loose on Hiroshima, and three days later Nagasaki experienced the same frightful horror. While the uranium was being produced and sold to the United States, the Dene people had absolutely no knowledge of what the uranium was being used for, and when they suddenly discovered it was used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki they were in complete shock. For to these aboriginal peoples the land is a sacred trust, and they hold themselves responsible for both its preservation and what it’s used for. The discovery that what was extracted from the mine on their land, by their hands, was a shock to them.
So in 1998 a Dene delegation left their homeland in the Northwest Territories and travelled to Hiroshima to attend the anniversary of the 1945 dropping of the bomb and the accompanying peace ceremonies. There in a filmed and documented emotional exchange they humbly apologized to the Japanese for their involvement in the process that ultimately led to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The course of history sometimes weaves a mysterious and complicated pathway. If inventors, scientists and discoverers could somehow see prophetically into the future and envision the results of their discovery, many would chose not only anonymity but would wish, I’m sure, that their discovery had remained a complete mystery to humankind. But on this day on May 16, 1930, a middle-aged man made a discovery . . . and the rest is now history.
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