Shelter Panel Discussion

Panel Discussion: The Highway of the Atom – From the Great Bear Lake to Japan

November 14, 2012 at 6 pm - La Cité Francophone

A subarctic mine on the shores of Great Bear Lake provided uranium for the bombs detonated over Japan in 1945 and affected the world afar and close to home. A history of Canada’s involvement in the Manhattan project and the development of the atomic bomb have been thwarted by restrictions on classified documents – until now!

Panelists:

Peter van Wyck is Professor of Communication Studies at Concordia University in Montreal, where he is also the director of the MA in Media Studies graduate program. He is an interdisciplinary scholar and writer with an abiding interest in the theoretical and practical relations between culture, nature, environment, landscape and memory. His most recent book, The Highway of the Atom (McGill-Queen's University Press) – winner of the 2011 Gertrude J. Robinson book award from the Canadian Communication Association – is a theoretical and archival investigation concerning the material and cultural history of uranium production in the North of Canada. Other writings include Signs of Danger: Waste, Trauma, and Nuclear Threat (University of Minnesota Press, 2005), and Primitives in the Wilderness: Deep Ecology and the Missing Human Subject (State University of New York Press, 1997). He is now working on a new book about nuclear media, apology, justice and the future. 

Julie Salverson writes plays, essays and libretti, and has published extensively about the artist as witness to stories of violence, historical memory, ethic sand the imagination. In 2011/12 she was Playwright in Residence at The Royal Military College of Canada. Julie teaches drama at Queen’s University. She is working on the book Atomic Elegy.

Tom Radford, two times Gemini winner Tom Radford's career spans forty years in the Canadian television and film industries as a Writer, Director, and Producer. His films have won recognition in festivals. He has been named Best Director at the Alberta Film Awards on eight separate occasions, most recently in 2011 for Tipping Point, The Age of the Oil Sands. In May 2012, Perfect Runner, produced by his company Clearwater, won 5 Alberta Film Awards.Tom was the writer and director of "Tickling the Dragon Tails - The story of Louis Slotin" who was one of a select group of elite scientists invited to Los Alamos to work on the Project aimed at outrunning the Nazis' bid to create an atomic bomb.