Rock and Soul
It
would be easy to dismiss Donna Dillman as a flake, but you shouldn't.
For 28 days near Sharbot Lake, the 53-year-old has been on a hunger
strike to protest uranium mining. Janice Kennedy finds out why
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| Janice Kennedy |
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The Ottawa Citizen |
Sunday, November 04, 2007
SHARBOT
LAKE, Ont. - The lake country west of Perth, a landscape of clear
waters and boreal forests, could be a postcard for the True North
Strong and Free. On the road up from Highway 7 into the interior, its
sides defined by crags and dark outcroppings, travel is not so much
across the Canadian Shield as through it. Precambrian rock, old as
time, holds the planet's secrets.
One of those secrets is
uranium, the heavy-metal element that offers new power sources through
nuclear reactors -- and the dark possibility of destruction, through
weapons and radioactive pollution.
It is uranium's dark side that
has a 53-year-old woman spending hard days and nights by the side of a
county road in the area, stubbornly cold and without food. For 28 days
now, Donna Dillman has been on a hunger strike.
"It was something
I felt I could do," she says simply, explaining this particular
protest. "It was an attention-getter." She plans to take no food until
the provincial government declares a moratorium on uranium mining in
Eastern Ontario.
Dillman's home these days is a roadside patch of
the rugged terrain 12 kilometres north of Sharbot Lake. A stretch of
gravel and grass, it is dotted with flags, temporary shelters and signs
announcing that "Our spirits will not be broken." The site is outside
gates opening on to more than 12,000 hectares (30,000 acres) marked for
uranium exploration and open-pit mining by Frontenac Ventures.
Nineteenth-century provincial legislation allows the company to enter
private and Crown land without permission and mine underground minerals
-- like uranium, whose market popularity has skyrocketed in recent
years.
The project exploded into controversy when a private
landowner was outraged to discover last fall that Frontenac had staked
some of his property and, subsequently, when the area's First Nations
communities set up a blockade June 28. In a letter to Premier Dalton
McGuinty, Chiefs Doreen Davis and Paula Sherman pointed out that the
land is unceded Algonquin territory, and, "while we generally permit
activities by non-Algonquins in our territory, and indeed welcome
settlers and the development they bring, we cannot accept uranium
exploration."
Their concerns are understandable. When released
from the rock that encases it, radioactive uranium can contaminate both
air and water. The tailings, pulverized rock left over after
extraction, possess elevated concentrations of radioisotopes. They
release radon gas into the atmosphere and seepage water contains
radioactive material and other toxins. From the proposed mine area,
that water would end up in the Mississippi River watershed and
ultimately in Ottawa, where it could filter into the capital's water
supply.
Frontenac Ventures, which says its extraction method is
safer than earlier methods, claims its mine would have no measurable
impact on an environment that already has plenty of natural uranium
contamination.
Native protesters temporarily left the blockaded
site two weeks ago to await the outcome of legal wrangling between them
and the mining company. But Dillman is in for the long haul.
She
has spent her nights in a sleeping bag inside a cramped camper van and,
more recently, a hut. During the day, she walks about the small area or
sits by a fire that warms shins and little else.
Even in the crisp sunshine of a late fall day, it is cold, with gusts of wind funnelling
up the road to the site. This is the worst part of it, she says, this
cold that penetrates her five layers of clothing and seems to come from
both outside and in.
Matter-of-factly, she reports that she has
headaches, sleeps poorly and gets dizzy if she stands or turns too
quickly. To maintain her strength, she drinks herbal tea, juice and a
concoction of maple syrup, lemon juice and cayenne pepper, which
neutralizes stomach acid. She has dropped more than 12 pounds.
But
she is awash in support. A nurse checks her every two days, and there
are always people around to offer warm socks, fruit juice and
companionship. From down the road, Hedy Muysson, 68, drops by three
times a week. A former Torontonian who once worked with refugee
children, she is profoundly opposed to uranium mining and hopeful about
Dillman's protest.
"It has to work," she says. "There's no maybe
about it. We can not have a mine here." The protest signs outside homes
up and down the road echo her words. The Green Party, to which Dillman
and her husband belong, has publicized her hunger strike, and leader
Elizabeth May called her "inspirational."
Outside the area, and
outside the environmentalist community, reactions to Dillman vary. Many
are impressed by the obvious courage of her convictions, but others
view her in a less kindly light.
She angers defenders of nuclear
power and critics of newer alternative power sources, who see her
position as unreasonable and extreme. She gets under the skin of people
put off by the implied arrogance of her action, by the suggestion that
one ordinary person should make a difference, by the maddening
persistence of her self-denial, by her unspoken reproach to the
comfortable. Some people just call her a flake.
"Hmm," she says,
her smile wry. "I don't consider myself a flake. And I don't think what
I'm doing is crazy. I'm here to make a statement."
Wife, mother
of four, devoted grandmother, entrepreneur, all-round busy bee, Dillman
lives a full, rich life she has no desire to endanger. Nor does she
enjoy creating anxiety for her family who, she says, are torn about
what she's doing, both proud and worried.
"But I believe in it. I wouldn't be able to keep going if I didn't."
Every
second day, she writes Premier McGuinty, who has not yet responded. She
wants him to know that uranium and nuclear energy are not benign. That
area real estate values are being threatened. That the proposed mining
project could endanger a million of his constituents, including family
and friends in his home town of Ottawa.
Yes, she admits calmly,
her politics and lifestyle probably belong to the "loony left." "But
maybe it's time people started listening to the loony left. They've
been saying things about cancer and asthma since the '60s, and it's all
been proven to be true."
She met her current husband,
environmentalist Mike Nickerson, at a 2002 Green Party convention. She
has the gentle speech of the "alternative healer" she is in her other
life. She practises reiki in the Lanark County home she shares with
Nickerson and her youngest daughter.
But the strike and uranium
fears transcend polarizing politics, she suggests. "We're doing this
for our grandchildren. We could have the Band-Aid solution of power for
30 years, then we'd run out of uranium, too -- except we will have left
a lot more hot spots behind and gene damage going into forever. It's
not the legacy we want to leave, and I don't think it's the legacy
McGuinty wants to leave."
She's willing to give an inch, though.
If the government even announced an inquiry into a moratorium
possibility, she'd start eating.
"Beyond that, I don't have an end date," she says, wind whipping her words, ancient rock beneath her feet.
"I'm here for the duration."
Janice Kennedy is a senior writer at the Citizen.
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