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September/October 2005 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Feature: Ottawa Valley The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations Explorer À la carte Mosaic Re:Sources

Rekindling the romance

I note in the article "Romancing the stone" (CG Jul/Aug 2005) that you show a jade mine called Vital, which I presume is on Vital Creek. In the 1930s, when I was a preschooler and taking grade one by correspondence, we lived on Vital Creek in north central British Columbia at a placer gold mining camp. I remember my father saying he noted a huge green boulder in that creek. Could that rock have come from an outcrop of jade in the immediate area?

Editor’s note: Jade has indeed been found on Vital Creek. In 1963, three jade boulders (one weighing 2,267 kilograms) were recovered from the creek bed, according to British Columbia’s Department of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources.

J. Cam Finlay
Victoria, B.C.

Wildwood neighbours

I enjoyed the article on Winnipeg’s Wildwood neighbourhood ("Wildwood childhood," CG Jul/Aug 2005). As a researcher of Kitimat, B.C., which was based on the same Radburn plan, I find it interesting to make comparisons. Like Wildwood, Kitimat’s early homes faced green commons that American architects Clarence Stein and Henry Wright had hoped would foster social interaction, safety and community. But individualism crept in, and as in Wildwood, people erected fences and hedges, contrary to Stein and Wright’s principles. Unlike Wildwood, Kitimat was planned as a full-fledged town with industry, in keeping with Ebenezer Howard’s ideas of a self-contained "garden city."

Kitimat was the post-Second World War exemplar of the Radburn plan in Canada, but Don Mills, also built in the early 1950s, reveals elements of Radburn as well. Many communities in the United States, including the greenbelt towns of the Depression years and Baldwin Hills in Los Angeles, designed by Stein in the late 1940s, show a continuous development of the Radburn plan. Indeed, hundreds of new towns built around the world since the early 1900s trace their plans to the work of Howard, Stein and others, whose Utopian ideas still have resonance in today’s planned communities.

Ken Favrholdt
Kamloops, B.C.

As a person who has lived in Wildwood Park my whole life (I’m 22), I was incredibly touched to see that there are others who feel the same way about the area. Many of the stories that Gillmor recounted are all too familiar. As a child, I lived in 2 of the 10 bays, and in both, there were many other children. We would have water fights in the summer and snowball wars in the winter. We would run in and out of one another’s houses, yards and garages, with no complaints of rowdy kids from the older residents.

I am a third-generation "Wildwoodian." My grandmother lived one bay over while she was alive, and providing I am still living in Winnipeg, I fully intend to come back with my own family. Thank you for writing such wonderful things about Wildwood and allowing others to understand just how grateful I am for being able to live here.

Lyndsay Houston
Winnipeg

Your article states that only Wildwood and Kitimat were of this type of design. A few years ago, I lived on Beirut Drive in the Lincoln Park area of southwest Calgary. Prior to its ongoing redevelopment, parts of this district were arranged in a similar fashion to Wildwood, with the front of the houses on a common green area and the road access at the rear.

As you drive through the current versions of suburbia, you would think this design has continued, since the most prominent feature of most houses — derogatorily described by some as McMansions — is a large two-car garage and driveway. The sad reality is that the new versions of suburbia are equally as unattractive from the front and rear. Surely, we can do better.

Alexander Bell
Calgary

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Feats of science

I was so thrilled with the Science Voyageur CD included in the July/August 2005 issue. It is the coolest thing I’ve ever received from a magazine. It will be a great help for school projects and just about anything else I can think of. It’s amazing.

Paulina Cumming
Newmarket, Ont.

Nuclear revisited

On your website there are many responses to Elaine Dewar’s article "Nuclear resurrection," (CG May/June 2005) from the pro-nuclear side. Why, then, out of the eight published replies in your magazine ("Reverberations," CG Jul/Aug 2005), were six anti-nuclear, one anti-candu and only one pro-nuclear? That seems a little unreasonable. Considering that 60 percent of Ontarians support nuclear power (and 20 percent oppose), maybe that would have represented a more reasonable split, even if those opposed do shout much louder!

Andrew L. Daley
Toronto

Who let the urbanites in?

All I could do upon reading "Who let the cats out?" (CG May/June 2005) was to jump up and down and shout "hooray" for the fisher. I fail to understand why urbanites choose to move to the country and almost immediately start to urbanize their surrounding environment. They clear out too many trees, strip shorelines of native vegetation, plant and mow lawns and almost always bring cats and dogs and assume that everyone else is going to tolerate them.

The wolf, coyote, fisher and fox are all well-established carnivores in most of rural Canada, and thankfully, the coyote and fox are adapting to urban areas. One of the main reasons for this is the explosion of the feral-cat population, which is now estimated at 60 million in North America. Since 1984, our native songbird population has fallen by 60 percent, a decline attributed largely to feral cats. Dogs, too, are no less a problem. In 2002, there were approximately threequarters of a million dog attacks on humans in North America, resulting in more deaths in one year than all black bears caused in the 20th century.

If you are planning to move to a rural area, are you ready? Can you leave the environment natural? Can you keep your pets quiet and totally under your control? If not, please stay in your urban area. Remember, you are moving into the wild critters’ backyard. Accept and adapt to their habits.

Murray English
Kenora, Ont.

Reviewer bias?

You chose Suzanne Methot, a Cree writer, to review Bitter Embrace (CG July/Aug 2005) a book about the cultural genocide of aboriginal people. Yet you did not choose an Acadian writer to review the books on the Acadian expulsion and, some say, genocide. The author who reviewed the books on Acadians considers the expulsion only as a "tragic and needless incident." Most Acadians would disagree with that statement.

Pierre Davis
Belle River, Ont.

Corrections:

The profile of Massey Medallist Tim Oke ("The inside story," Jul/Aug 2005) should have stated that Oke has looked at the sway of Hong Kong high-rises to predict whether or not this would disrupt laser communications during a typhoon. The article should also have said that he has been asked by several cities, not by the United States Army, to advise on how to handle chemical or radioactive releases in city streets.

In "The Inside Story" in the last issue ("The survey says …"), the opening line should have read "The Hibernia oil field lies off the coast of which province?" to better reflect the question that appeared in the Canadian Council for Geographic Education’s survey.

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REVERBERATIONS ONLINE

Romancing the stone

I have just finished reading the fascinating article on jade in British Columbia (“Romancing the stone,” CG Jul/Aug 2005). One omission is the reference to the Aztecs, and their fondness, nay reverence, for jade. It may well be that the jade they prized was not the nephrite jade of British Columbia, but jadeite. No matter, in their culture, jade was prized over gold.

Tom Atkinson
Toronto

Nuclear reaction

This is in response to the letter from Pat Ross-Ross in the July/August 2005 issue of CG, commenting on Ontario’s nuclear problems. He says that, "nuclear plants cannot follow as the electrical load of the system rises and falls. They must run at 85 percent or higher, or they will shut themselves down". He is incorrect.

Due to the high capital cost of nuclear plants they normally run continuously at full power day and night, at base load operation, to produce low cost electricity. However, in the future, for environmental reasons and due to depletion of natural gas supplies, nuclear will not only have to supply base load, but intermediate and peak loads as well. CANDU reactors would do this by reducing output to 60 percent of full power in the late evening and ramping up power in the morning over a period of 4 hours or so.

Nuclear plants in Germany and France have practiced load following for many years, and even use the nuclear plants for frequency control of the grid. In Ontario frequency control of the grid can be done with some of the hydro plants to save wear and tear on the nuclear units.

If load following is not used the excess power can be used for export, or for hydrogen generation, pumped water storage or compressed air storage to meet peak load demands in a Kyoto friendly way. In France, nuclear energy supplies 80 percent of the demand with most of the balance coming from hydro. Ontario could do the same.

Donald Jones, retired engineer
Mississauga, Ont.

Reading history

I had to respond to Tom Mason’s reviews of John Mack Faragher’s “A Great and Noble Scheme” and Dean Jobb’s “The Acadians, a people’s story of exile and triumph” (Reviews, CG Jul/Aug 2005). I had the occasion to read both books and, interestingly enough, came to a totally different opinion.

Tom Mason is typical of a number of people in Nova Scotia who still insist that the Acadians are to be blamed for their expulsion. His use of the words “illiterate” to describe Acadians, and the expression “their Mi’kmaq in-laws” are derogatory and show bias against Acadians and Mi’kmaqs.

I strongly suspect that most settlers in Halifax and Lunenburg in 1749 were illiterate. In those days, as Mr. Mason should know, the only literate people were officials, clergy and Naval or Army officers. Therefore why categorize the Acadians as illiterate if not to belittle them.

Mr. Mason does not believe that the word ethnic cleansing should be used to describe the expulsion as it is a modern term, but the use of the word does not make it untrue. What about his use of the expression “their Mi’kmaqs in-laws,” I doubt that the Acadians and natives would think in those terms?

Bernard Derible
Halifax, N.S.

Romancing the stone

I have just finished reading the fascinating article on jade in British Columbia (“Romancing the stone,” CG Jul/Aug 2005). One omission is the reference to the Aztecs, and their fondness, nay reverence, for jade. It may well be that the jade they prized was not the nephrite jade of British Columbia, but jadeite. No matter, in their culture, jade was prized over gold.

Tom Atkinson
Toronto

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May/June 2005

Nuclear reactions resurrected

I am very disappointed with the article on nuclear power written by Elaine Dewar (May/June 2005). I was expecting an objective article that would present the challenge that Ontario will soon have to face. Instead, I found a biased article that did not explain the issue very well. Also, given that the article appeared in the annual environment issue, I was expecting a deeper look at the environmental aspects of nuclear power in comparison with other means of electricity production.

The article begins with the unsubstantiated claim that links nuclear energy to war. Ontario and the United States are facing a potential energy crisis. New production plans must come in line in the next few decades to meet the growing demand for electricity. Nuclear power, along with renewable sources such as wind power, could contribute to meeting the demand. They would increase the mix of energy sources and diminish the dependence on fossil fuel.

In the United States, the production of electricity from nuclear power plants has been increasing steadily in the past decade, irregardless of wars. The future of the nuclear industry in Canada will be a political decision. Ontario must soon make a choice. This choice will decide the fortunes of the nuclear industry in Canada, not wars.

Roger Hugron
Orleans, Ont.

Elaine Dewar’s article "Nuclear Resurrection" (May/June 2005) provides an interesting outsider view of a crucial industry that Canadians know little about, but unfortunately leaves the waters muddier than before she waded in.

Canada ’s wartime introduction to nuclear energy is fascinating history, but irrelevant to the ebb and flow of the present industry. Today’s dynamic is a politicized struggle of economics and environmental realities, and a widespread public apprehension rooted in mushroom-cloud fears and ineffective communication.

Active support of a large-scale energy technology with no air emissions is an ethical and necessary role for government, and this is certainly not the kind of "political interference" I am quoted in the article as opposing. Rather, this is a time for concerted action by our leaders.

Most unfortunate is Dewar’s cynical conclusion that nuclear technology should be supported, if only to provide the brains to keep nuclear waste from visiting doom upon future generations. This ignores the essence of Canada’s geologic nuclear waste technology, which is to isolate the material in perpetuity without institutional intervention. In this we are guided by nature itself, which, as any frustrated uranium prospector will tell you, has been doing just this with similar material for millions of years.

Jeremy Whitlock, PHD
Reactor Physicist, Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.
Deep River, Ont.

Before adopting the nuclear option on a mass scale, we must remember the lessons from nuclear catastrophes at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

The most famous US nuclear accident took place on March 28, 1979, a series of failures and operator mistakes turned an equipment malfunction at Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Two days after the start of the accident, Harold Denton, a senior official of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), told the commissioners that they should start evacuating people before a serious escape of radioactivity occurred. Yet, a day later, they had done nothing about it. Most people took it upon themselves to flee the area.

Similarly, Soviet scientists and engineers were extremely complacent about the danger facing nuclear reactors. In 1985, a year before the Chernobyl accident, the staff at the plant were interviewed for an article in Soviet Life. Nikolai Fomin, Chernobyl’s chief engineer, assured the world that his plant was "completely safe" for both people and environment. Boris Chernov, a turbine operator, assured his interlocutors: "There is more emotion in the fear of nuclear power plants than real danger. Soviet engineers -- like their counterparts in the West -- were confident that they had dangerous forces under complete control.

On April 25, 1986, during the night shift at Chernobyl No 4 unit, at precisely 40 seconds after 1.23 a.m., a fireball appeared in the night sky over the turbine hall. The nuclear reactor at Chernobyl had just exploded.

When he was in Moscow in 1979, just after Three Mile Island, the governor of Pennsylvania, Dick Thornburgh, made, it seems, an astute analogy between the members of the Soviet nuclear establishment and enthusiasts for nuclear power in the West. He was right to wonder whether the March 1979 accident at Three Mile Island would make a difference in the Soviet Union. Would the unbridled enthusiasm for nuclear power of the Soviet specialists be moved by questions of safety raised by a serious accident -- particularly if it happened at their own doorsteps? The question remains germane in Canada today.

Mahmood Elahi
Ottawa, Ont.

I am dismayed by the blatantly skewed view that Ms. Dewar took in her article "Nuclear Resurrection" (May/June 2005). 

Indeed, for a publication that appeals to scientific thought, a smear piece is the last thing one would expect. Ms. Dewar’s opinion about the inherent evil of nuclear power is evident in her opening sentences. In Ms. Dewar’s eyes it is a type of energy that is unwanted, dangerous and unneeded.  Her entire article does not layout a reasoned argument regarding nuclear power, listing the pros and cons, but rather presents the cons alone, building an opinion piece against the industry.  

Are there dangers in the industry?  Yes, just as there are in any heavy industry, from conventional power plants to mining to public transportation to manufacturing.  Are the dangers manageable?  From Ms. Dewar’s article we cannot tell.  Her anti-nuclear shading makes all dangers manifestly huge.

Are there benefits?  Yes.  Can the system be managed better?  Yes, but so can any system.  Good management should be able to react to problems and work with the experts- internal and external- to solve them. 

Ms. Dewar’s article ignores the potential of a well-run nuclear system, and leaves us sweltering in the dark, because she does not propose alternatives, or their costs. 

It is unfortunate that Canadian Geographic chose bias rather than discovery.

Joseph Gauci
Mississauga, Ont.

The article "Nuclear Reaction" (CG, May/June 2005) poses an intriguing question:

Why has the nuclear power industry enjoyed increasing business and popularity despite the persistent efforts of environmentalists who want to shut it down?

In the end the author, Elaine Dewar, reaches the gloomy conclusion that we have to keep the nuclear industry alive so we will have enough trained physicists to guard the hole that we are going to throw all our radioactive rocks into. I must admit that I cannot tell if this conclusion is a sarcastic jibe, or a fatalistic admission of defeat.

I think the question is important and merits a better answer.

To begin to understand this phenomenon you have to know that the operation of a CANDU reactor does not produce any radioactive waste. CANDU reactors are clean. They just output electricity and used-once fuel, which is all accounted for, kept on site, and causes no problems for anyone

But what should we do with that little bit of used-once fuel that is slowly accumulating at our reactor sites? The answer is that we should handle it with great care and respect. It is worth billions of dollars. We have enough stored up to power Canada for more than a century - carbon dioxide free, no new mine tailings, nothing. We have a huge energy reserve sitting right under our noses and all we have to do is use it.

Are fast reactors also waste free? The answer is no. When uranium is consumed in a fast reactor it is broken down into elements that cannot break down further due to fission, mostly cesium and strontium. These elements are radioactive, but have very short half-lives.

Nuclear power is inexpensive. Nuclear reactors cost a lot, but they also produce a lot. When you divide the total cost by the total amount of energy produced, nuclear reactors are a good deal: as cheap as, safer, and cleaner than coal.

We have a technology that is clean, safe, inexpensive, Canadian, and it provides us with something really useful: energy. Perhaps we can begin to understand why Canadians like it, and why its use is expanding.

Randal Leavitt
Ottawa, Ont.

Thanks to CG and Elaine Dewar for an interesting an informative article on an important topic. I would like to note a couple of points that might have been added.

It takes several years to construct a plant and over this period a considerable amount of fossil fuels are used. This has two important effects in evaluating nuclear energy as a "clean"

1. Power source: The construction itself makes a major contribution to greenhouse gas emissions thereby contributing to global warming; 2. So much energy is used in the construction that it takes several years for the plant to produce a net energy gain - the energy return on energy invested over the life of the reactor is thus quite low. Wind energy is considerably higher. These two facts add to nuclear power’s unattractiveness.

The comment at the end of the piece about needing to maintain nuclear power well into the future in order to protect the radioactive waste is illogical and misinformed. First of all, there is no mention of the amount of waste already needing supervision for many millennium to come. Adding to it will only increase the expense and danger. Secondly, what is suggested — continued use of nuclear power for a very long time - is physically impossible. Uranium is a non-renewable resource, and if we were to build many more reactors the supply would not last more than a couple of decades.

What is needed is not a "nuclear industry that cannot be allowed to die", but a nuclear waste containment industry that must endure.

Thanks again for a good article - except for the last bit.

Jack Santa-Barbara

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Cure hunter

I am writing regarding your article entitled “Cure hunters” (May/June 2005). I would like to share with you the Canadian policy context around the issue of Access to Genetic Resources and Benefit-sharing (ABS) and the international efforts under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to regulate bioprospecting activities around the world.

One of the key objectives of the CBD calls for the “fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources.” The situation described in your article captures the underlying elements of ABS by demonstrating how accessing genetic resources is now subject to the agreement of local communities. It also exemplifies the reality that the users of the genetic resources must work closely with the providers of the resources to ensure the fair and equitable sharing of any benefits derived from the use of the resources. Those benefits can either be monetary or non-monetary in nature.

Countries of the world, under the auspices of the CBD, are now working together to establish an international regime on ABS to regulate bioprospecting activities.

There is an increasing interest around the world regarding the value of genetic resources, and a growing recognition of the social and scientific benefits that can be derived from them.

In this light and in the context of increasing advances in science and technology, countries have begun regulating the access to genetic resources found on their territory and the ways in which the benefits arising out of the use of those resources should be shared.

The federal government, led by Environment Canada, has recently launched a national policy process directed at identifying Canada’s interests in the area of access and benefit-sharing. Internationally, Canada is also active in the negotiation, under the Convention, of an international regime on ABS.

Karen Brown
Assistant Deputy Minister
Environmental Conservation Service

Fisher tracking

I recently read Patricia Pearson’s article about fishers (May/June 2005). We saw a "new” animal at our home near Dundalk, Onatrio this March. We saw it several times. Looking in our mammal books, we decided it was a fisher. This was about two kilometres north of the Grey County border east of Highway Ten. In case anyone is tracking these creatures, I thought I would write.

Betty Sherwood
Dundalk, Ont.

Secret Hollows

10 years! WOW! And the magazine just keeps getting better. The article about Toronto’s ravines (“Secret Hollows”, CG May/June 2005) ROCKED. I know Philip Jessup quite well, but I did not know he was a great photographer.

Once again, congratulations on your 10 years showing Canadians that we live in the most beautiful country in the world and that with this privilege comes a responsibility to protect it.

David Love
Downsview, Ont.

Proud producer

Upon reading your 10th annual environment issue, I am deeply concerned with the portrayal your magazine consistently and insistently purports with respect to agricultural industry and farmers themselves. I am referring specifically to your article on the "Carbon Decade"(May/June 2005) where you lead the public to believe that hidden ingredients, such as pesticides residues, are rampant in today’s food because of modern agricultural practices.

You are correct in stating that pesticide residues are subject to ongoing debate but the links to neurological and reproductive damage specifically refers to pesticide exposure and not to consumption of residues. In other words the risk lies with the farmers themselves who are applying the products. Because of this risk the Ontario government along with farmers take responsible pesticide use seriously.

You also state that many of the ingredients found in pesticides were registered before 1960, "well before the long-term effects on humans were known". These pesticide and all products since this time, have undergone intensive reviews every five years, using several methods of risk assessments by Health Canada.

It should also be noted that farmers in Ontario have reduced the use of pesticides by 52% in the past 20 years. This reduction, in fact, is due to education and advances in the science of pest management, not legislation.

Farmers are very proud of the quality of food we produce. Our consumers are well served by the conscientious efforts of Canadian farmers, backed by an excellent regulatory and monitoring system.

Colette Montgrain-Mclean
concerned farmer
Essex County, Ont.

Creature count

At our home in Langley B.C., which is recognized as a Back Yard Habitat by the Canadian Wildlife Federation, we noted the disappearance of the red-legged frog from our property over the last six years. The Fraser Valley has been invaded by the bullfrog, which is threatening the songbirds as well as the house cat!!!!

Upon our arrival to our home here in Barbados we were thrilled when, at dusk, the property came alive with "toads", big and small. However, we were quickly educated that these were in fact cane toads that were introduced to the island in the 16th century to control insects in the sugar cane fields. Well, most of the sugar cane is gone now but the toads have thrived to the point of being quite a nuisance. So here, as with the bullfrog back home, is an example of amphibians thriving.

Thank you for an amazing magazine — one that will keep us in touch during our stay here.

Jane and Chris D’Silva
St. Peter, Barbados

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* Letters may be edited for length, accuracy and liability.