I had a fabulous sleep last night.  It was a quiet morning and I took time to speculate at how surprised and pleased I am to be ‘weathering’ so well.  I suspect others are feeling similar feelings.  Going in, I imagined that by the end of a full month, I’d be in far rougher shape than I am, energy/strength-wise.  Could it be that I continue to hold up so well because what I am doing here feels/is ‘right’ and, in conjunction with the efforts of others, the path remains clear.

Having internet service has definitely changed the look of my day.  I only spent about four hours outside today, compared to the usual 14 or more.  On the up side, the time was spent networking, mostly with radio stations across Ontario, and on an interview with Global TV.  They will air tomorrow night at 5:30 on Shawn Mallin’s show (I’ve likely spelled that incorrectly).  A positive response has quickly come back from radio-ecoshock, where they have already planned to speak with Jim Harding, author of  Uranium – Canada’s Dirty Secret, and will add a bit on our struggle here.

I neglected to mention that we had an unusual guest at the site last night.  Her (new) name is Mori (short for moratorium) and she is a feline, about 5 months old, mostly grey in colour, with very short hair.  Incredibly thirsty and hungry, she was inclined to devour the single can of dog food that I found, but, to give her stomach a chance to stretch, we fed her in little bits.  (That’s how we’ll be feeding me one of these days.)  I’m not sure whether she is lost or has been dropped off.  We’ve had a cat food donation and she is gradually getting her fill. Personality wise, she is a charmer. One of our MELT OPP officers has already fallen in love and I suspect that Kassia, Zephyr and Taegan will too when they visit on Wednesday.  We’ll wait to see if someone shows up to claim her before doing anything drastic.  Meanwhile, she is a lovely mascot for the site.

Today’s visitors included a couple of ladies who have been very active in Ottawa and in Carleton Place.  One, a member of Ottawa CCAMU, has written a newsletter and distributed 200 copies, with more to come.  I didn’t realize it when she visited, but she’s also responsible for the red ‘no uranium’ bumper stickers that you may have spotted.  The other has sent numerous handwritten letters to the Premier, the Prime Minister and various ministries and has had her ‘letter to the editor’ published in several area newspapers.  She’s planning to invite friends, feed them (potluck?) and have a letter writing party at her home.  This is an excellent idea for others to entertain and to spread around.  Maybe we could do it from here at some point, now that we have a nice warm spot to work from.   If you can join us at the ‘sit-in/picket’ at Premier McGuinty’s office on Friday, Nov 16th, throughout the day, how about handwriting a letter to deliver in person.

Scott Reid’s office called tonight and he will be out for a visit on Wednesday morning.  Scott is the MP (Conservative) in this riding and I’ve a personal connection to him, through Mike.

Blessings
Donna (and Mori – she enjoys ‘helping’ me type by walking over top of the keyboard)

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly the days pass here on the side of the road.  Between boiling water, squeezing lemons, greeting visitors, keeping warm, making and tending fires, giving interviews (phone and in person), the time just flies by.

Today we were videotaped and interviewed by two students doing a paper on conflict for a course at St. Paul’s University in Ottawa and by a writer from a bi-monthly publication in the Killaloe area.

One of our MELT (Major Events Liason Team) OPP Officers was kept busy mediating over whether hunters would be allowed inside the gate for their annual hunt.  The issue is one of safety.  I’m personally fine with it so long as the hunters remain aware that there are people on this side of the gate.

One of our overnight guests, joining us for his first visit, came from Kingston bearing gifts of flour, oat flakes, rice, sugar, propane and organic chocolate bars.  It was debated as to whether the bars could be juiced but we decided that it likely wouldn’t fly.

News came that the twelve-week negotiation period will begin on Monday and that more news would be forthcoming at the community meeting to be held early tomorrow afternoon.  The campfire discussion this evening was stimulating, as is often the case.

If you have the annual Native Christmas gathering marked on your calendar, please change the date from Dec. 1st to the 2nd.  The hall had already been booked for the former date, hence the change.  Please do plan to attend; it should be quite a party.
Love
Donna

Rock and Soul

Janice Kennedy

The Ottawa Citizen

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.

Up until this point, Donna has been reaching out to folks with the help of friends.  Some of us are keeping this blog going (a huge thank you to Nathan Sloniowski!!) and are unable to respond to all the kind words of support you are sending Donna's way.  Please know that she is hugely appreciative of your thoughts and prayers.

We are very grateful to Sheila MacDonald for taking the following footage of Donna.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

The following is a press release from the Green Party of Canada

26.10.2007

Green leader lauds federal councilor for hunger strike against uranium mining

OTTAWA – Green Party leader Elizabeth May today lauded the efforts of Green federal councilor Donna Dillman, who has received national media attention for a hunger strike she began on October 8th in an effort to end uranium mining in Eastern Ontario.

Ms. May, who staged a 17-day hunger strike herself in 2001 to get federal action on the Sydney tar ponds, renewed the Green Party’s call for a moratorium on uranium mining and prospecting, calling Ms. Dillman’s hunger strike “inspirational”.

“Donna’s effort plays an important role in the campaign to end uranium mining and prospecting in Canada,” said Ms. May. “Her actions are indicative of the broad-based, community opposition to uranium extraction and the severe environmental and health effects posed by a uranium mine in Eastern Ontario.”

Ms. Dillman has been camped out at a mine site in Robertsville, near Sharbot Lake in Eastern Ontario, where thirty thousand acres have been staked out for uranium exploration by mining company Frontenac Ventures. Ardoch Algonquin and Shabot Obaadgiwan First Nation have blockaded the mine site at Robertsville since June 29th of this year.

“Radioactive particles released by mining are carried downwind and downstream and have the potential to poison hundreds of thousands of Eastern Ontarians. Nuclear energy is no solution to the climate crisis and is inevitably linked to nuclear weapons proliferation. The Green Party would end mining and refining uranium in Canada and put a stop to perverse subsidies to the nuclear industry.”

The old saying “It never rains, but it pours,” was certainly true here yesterday.  Heating equipment arrived for the Boler, the HTHB got well on its way to being fully insulated and a wood stove was installed in the Dickey Moore Trailer.  The new, fully insulated, to code, stove-pipe was donated by a local, very sympathetic business.  (If corporations are people, I figure business could and should have feelings.)  Thanks to everyone for the parts he or she played in bringing us heated accommodations.

Janice Kennedy, from the Ottawa Citizen, paid a visit and will write about us in her column in Sunday’s edition.  One of her many interesting inquiries was around what I say to people who think that I’m a ‘flaky.’  The question amused me, mostly because I assumed some might think me crazy, but flaky hadn’t entered my head.

On this, the first day of my 4th week on the side of the road, I am still feeling positive, still appreciative of the company and the incredible support and glad to have the amenities that are coming our way – specifically the land phone line and warm beds.  My blood pressure remains good at 115/75 and my pulse strong (61).  My upper arm muscles are weakened slightly and I have to watch to not stand up or turn too quickly.  I haven’t weighed myself, sans clothes, yet, but now that there is a warm space I’ll be able to remove the numerous layers long enough to get an accurate reading, so stay posted.

With the government having named its new ministers, please keep the letters rolling out to them, handwritten if you have the time, and hopefully we’ll soon have our assurance that uranium will be left in the ground, undisturbed, where it belongs.

Blessings
Donna

People often ask what they can bring when they come visit.  At the top of the list would be a couple of armloads (or a trunk load) of dry seasoned hardwood.  If they have a juicer, and are so inclined, I always appreciate whatever juices come my way.  Interestingly, and without any coordinated effort, about a liter appears daily.  No fuss, no waste.

I’ve been asked if I do broths, smoothies, protein drinks and the like.  The answer is no.  My intake consists of 4 plus litres of water daily in the maple syrup/lemon juice/cayenne pepper mix and in herbal teas.  In an attempt to keep me internally warm, all my drinks are taken warm or hot.

I’ve also heard the comment, “But doesn’t a hunger strike, by its very nature, mean no nourishment what-so-ever?”  Not this one.  I believe ‘water only’ would not allow me to live to see a moratorium.  From the beginning I’ve recognized that the process of securing a moratorium is something that will take some time.  Consequently, I made the decision to go with what I am doing and to draw the line at smoothies, etc., which I consider food, as opposed to drink.

Some have wondered what I did before I became the hunger striking Gramma.  I am, as you likely know, a mother, grandmother and wife and I live(d) a half hour’s drive from the site - on the outskirts of Lanark.  My youngest daughter, who turns 18 on the 7th of November still lives at home.  For much of the last decade I’ve practiced and taught Reiki and done personal and spiritual growth counseling.  More recently and since his latest book has been published, Mike and I have spent the majority of our time planning itineraries and traveling the country educating what it takes to “Live on Earth as if we want to stay (which is the subtitle of his book).

In some ways what I am doing here is not a big leap from what I was doing every day.  I still write letters to ‘the editor,’ network with people who can help us get the message out, and contact media regularly.  The difference is that now, instead of being the support person while Mike is out front, I’m on the front line.  As intimidating as that is, the issue far outweighs any hesitation on my part.  Other differences include the lack of creature comforts we are all so accustomed to.  Surprisingly, no part of me misses any of those (warmth aside), possibly because I recognize that if we don’t, as a society, wake up to the reality of how we are abusing the very planet that sustains us, we are all in for some difficult times, that will make what I am doing here look like a picnic outing.

Thanks again for all you are all doing.  The letters to the premier are being noticed. Thanks to Lynn for editing my submissions.  She tells me that she has noticed some decline my ability to write in the last week. (Editor's note: She needs a bit more editing than usual.) Today’s highlight was a surprise Moon Ceremony, led by White Bear Woman.  Not being a Native myself, the experience was wonderful and powerful.

Blessings
Donna

Lots of visitors, on an otherwise uneventful day. With the weather so cool and wet, it was good to be able to gather around the woodstove in the HTHB (house that Harold built).

A couple from Sharbot Lake stopped in for the first time and I was offered (and gratefully accepted) a mini Reiki treatment.  I’d been feeling drained again today and it really picked me up.  Thanks.  Scales arrived today, so I’ll be able to give an accurate account of weight loss from here on.

As I write this I find myself curious as to what is being shown on News World and The National, so do please bring me reports and call or write to other programs/newspapers/magazines to encourage them to cover our story.

People are curious as to how it is for me not having eaten for 16 days.  I continue to feel peaceful and grounded most of the time, and I’ve been a bit fatigued in the last three days, as you know.  When I get up or turn too quickly, I feel lightheaded and that will worsen over time.  As long as I sip my hot drinks pretty continuously, I’m not experiencing hunger pangs and I can keep my body temperature up.  A mild headache will develop when I go too long without the maple syrup concoction that remains the mainstay.

People are also curious in regard to what I am thinking about during all of these hours at the roadside.  I’m thinking that I thought that I’d have had lots of time to catch up on my reading.  I’d packed a box of books for that purpose and have since sent most of them back home, as there, so far at least, has been very little desire to be reading.  When the desire is present, it is too dark to struggle to see with my aging gramma eyes and hopelessly inadequate lighting. With so many visitors arriving throughout the days, I find myself much more interested in their stories and in catching them up on what is happening here.  As well, I think a lot about how to reach the masses and what would help them understand that this is one of those issues that could result in turning the direction in which society is headed and that once our goal is changed, getting there will be easy. There are so many fronts that could be acted on.  No precedents will have to be set.  There are examples all over the world of various components of what needs doing.  One day soon, I’ll write my list of what I believe those things to be.

Be well, please come visit to show your support, or do one other thing today to further our efforts.
Love
Donna

The OPP landed in first thing to do their surveillance.  There was a bit of a stir when the landowner and a neighbour wanted to come onto the property and were denied access (by the OPP) while that was happening.

Around 70 people attended the open Native council meeting this afternoon to hear Ardoch’s lawyer explain where things sit currently.  Lots of people stopped by during the day – it didn’t hurt that the weather was bright and beautiful. It is clear that support is strong and growing.  The prize for longest distance traveled goes to a couple of gentlemen from N.B., while our highest profile guest was Frank DeJong, Leader of the Green Party of Ontario, and a personal friend, who stopped in to check up on me. Soon the trailer will be heated and the hut is already cozy and warm, so please come by for a few minutes, a day or several.  Just bring your sleeping bag, pillow and toothbrush.

News came from CBC Morning Show that they were not going to come for an interview after-all because they had heard, erroneously, that the blockade was down.  (Although they are showing good faith and continuing their move to this side of the gate, until the ‘I’s are dotted and the ‘T’s are crossed, the Natives continue to hold the gate.)   I explained that to the young woman who called, but she was not convinced that there was still a story here.  From my perspective, whether or not there is a blockade matters not to my purpose and presence here.

In the meantime, I know that we will win this by people power and with the power of the Internet.  Whatever you are doing – whether it is writing Letters to the Editor; attending the site; getting a ‘Bring Gramma Home’ sign where people can see it; speaking to your MP’s or MPP’s and the Premier, sending emails far and wide, including this blog; copying the petition; speaking, or having someone speak to your group; getting together a coalition of grandparents (and honourary grandparents) in your town or city; making donations or holding a fundraiser, please keep doing it – something each and every day.  If you have some other ideas please run with them and let us know so that we can share them.

CCAMU is looking for people to picket the Premier’s office and hand out info at city hall in Ottawa (and possibly Queens Park, too).  If you are in Ottawa or Toronto, or can be, please let us know when you can spare a few hours.

Thanks to Philip Thompson for the fabulous sleeping bag - good to 25 below.  With some hot rocks and a hot water bottle inside with me, the cold problem should be licked (and just in time too).  Up till now, I had not been naming the people who have been supporting just in case they’d rather not have their name on the site, but I was assured that Philip would be ok with that.  Thanks for the note too, Philip. It’s incredible how the needs of the camp are met sometimes even before we put out a request.  Thanks everyone.

Today was the first day that I felt fatigued and my blood pressure was up, though still in the acceptable range.   Weight loss is in the 10 lb. range.  Mentally, I’m good and I’m feeling both disappointed - to think that what I am doing is not of interest - at least to one news program (expectations will get ya every time) and blessed to have the support that is here (and out there).  I’m also grateful for the break in the weather.
Love
Donna