Port Hope or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb

There has been much talk about nuclear bombs in the past several weeks. Too much talk, I would say. But this reminded me of this little post I've been hiding from my readers.

A few months ago, I took a little break from daily life to go visit a little place called Port Hope, Ontario. The town boasts a beautifully kept historical "main street" and a couple of very old churches. But what really caught my eye was the town's uranium processing plant.

The El Dorado plant (now called the Cameco plant) enriched some of the uranium used in the Manhattan project, and some say it even supplied the uranium for the bombs dropped on Japan.

As I strolled around the fence of the uranium processing plant, a sudden silence fell upon me. I couldn't stop thinking about the impact this little town had had on world affairs. On people. On families. I stopped for a second to take it in, to realize what the metal structures in front of me symbolized...

I wondered what the town felt like in August 1945. What did people have on their minds as they crossed the street in front of the uranium plant? Did it smell any different? Did people go to work as usual? Was there talk about the town's complicity with the big mushroom clouds that shook the Japanese sky?