Photo: Sharon Oliver-Murphy

"I want to be satisfied that I tried. I know I can make a difference, even if it might only be a small one."

Don't let Maisie Shiell's sweet smile and gentle manner fool you. Beneath the benevolent exterior, this 88-year-old Saskatoon grandmother is the most informed private citizen in Canada on the subject of uranium extraction. Shiell has spent 30 years achieving her daunting level of expertise, and industry and government officials alike know one thing — when she speaks, you listen.

And speaking out is what Shiell is about. When her husband Jim died suddenly in the 1960s, the British-born mother of four left the family farm near Govan to attend teachers' college. Her tenure in a First Nations community in northern Saskatchewan opened her heart to the vital connection between community and the environment. In 1976, while attending the United Nations Habitat in Vancouver, she witnessed the evasive response of Saskatchewan's environment minister to questions about the province's high-grade uranium-mining industry. "When our group asked to see a copy of the legislation governing the industry," says Shiell, "he promised to respond in two days. But he fled the conference so they could get down to writing a policy."

Shiell's been on red alert ever since. Over the years, she's studied thousands of documents, taken courses in physical chemistry and travelled the country attending nearly every inquiry, panel discussion and hearing on uranium. Her primary concern is alpha radiation released during the extraction and refining of the high-grade uranium unique to northern Saskatchewan. It's a hazard not only for the miners but for the environment and its resident plants, animals and humans. "Once radiation is released, it's there for thousands of years," she says. "There is no taking it back, and no one has any idea what the long-term genetic effects are."

For more than 30 years, Shiell has kept industry's feet to the fire, notes a colleague, asking tough questions and demanding answers. "My goal in life is to leave behind a safe and healthy world for our children," says Shiell. "I want to be satisfied that I tried. I know I can make a difference, even if it might only be a small one."