The first time I interviewed producers Bernie Finkelstein and David Hatch, and Gemini-award-winning documentary director Michèle Hozer about Atomic Reaction, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer was set to screen at The Regent.

“We had no idea that film was in the works,” recalls Mr. Hatch. “It was a very lucky accident. It brought so much attention to the very project we were working on.”

At the same time, he notes, “Canada was not even mentioned.”

“Canada’s role in the development of the Manhattan Project is not widely understood. We were not a bit player.”

“The story of how the uranium was discovered, not enough people know about it,” adds Mr. Finkelstein. “And the fact that all the uranium used for the first atom bombs, those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was processed in Canada, in Port Hope, is something Canadians still don’t know anything about.”

Enter this County-made, 90-minute documentary, which begins streaming on CBC Gem January 8. A polished and engrossing production, it incorporates archival footage from the 1940s alongside scenes of present-day life among the Dene at Great Bear Lake and the residents of Port Hope.

The story is told entirely through interviews. “There is no script,” says Mr. Hatch. “And, very unusual for a documentary, there is no narrator. No voice over. People tell their own stories.”

“We want to show how decisions made in the ’30s, ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s also have a long half-life, affecting us far into the future,” says Ms. Hozer.

The film starts and ends in Port Hope, which is saturated in low-level radioactive waste linked to the refining of uranium. A major clean up has been underway for over two decades. The Government of Canada has allotted $2.6 billion, and another decade, to digging up radioactive soil and storing in 500-year long-term waste containers.

“The half-life of uranium is tens of thousands of years” says Ms. Hozer. “That’s how hard it is to clean up nuclear waste. It lasts forever. That means it has to be stored forever.”

“It’s in the ravines, in the harbour, on the beaches, under the schools, in the fire stations, and in homes.”

It’s also in the forests. Port Hope stands to lose 50,000 mature trees. The soil they are growing in contains traces of arsenic.

From Port Hope, filming moves to Great Bear Lake, near the Arctic Circle, on the trail of prospector Gilbert Labine, who found radium there in 1930.

Cinday Gilday on set at Great Bear Lake. (Supplied).

“At the time, uranium was not in demand. But Labine knew that pitchblende — a rock containing radium, cobalt, uranium, and silver — could be found in the Arctic. He hired a bush plane, and the story goes that something caught his eye while flying over Great Bear Lake,” says Mr. Finkelstein. “And he asked the pilot to turn back.”

There is another version of this story, one that involves the knowledge of the Indigenous Dene people. “The story there is that a Dene elder told Labine about the site and handed him a shiny black and green rock,” says Mr. Finkelstein.

“We tell the story two ways – there are two different views of how Labine, a prospector for gold and silver, discovered uranium in a remote location of Canada in 1930. The Indigenous people of Great Bear Lake play a big part in this story.”

At Great Bear Lake

Immediately after his discovery, Labine staked the claim of Eldorado Gold Mining Ltd. at Great Bear Lake. By 1932, he had built a refinery at Port Hope, 6000km from the base that is still called Port Radium.

The Sahtúot’ine, or Sahtu Dene, the people of Great Bear Lake, helped carry the radioactive ore, in sacks on their backs, to barges waiting to carry it along the Northern Transportation Route to Fort McMurray and from there by rail to Port Hope.

Gilbert Labine’s great-grandson, Brian Bromley and Lawrence Nayally (Photo Supplied).

At the time, uranium was just a by-product from the refinement of ore for radium.

“Uranium was in this white sand that just piled up. Huge piles of it accumulated at the refinery in Port Hope. So they started to give it away. It spread all over town as a building material, in foundations, to shore up building sites, under houses, schools, the fire station, everywhere,” said Ms. Hozer.

Meanwhile, “physicists from around the world were all trying to figure out how to split the atom,” says Mr. Finkelstein. While radium fell out of favour, prices dropping so precipitously that the Port Radium mine was closed in 1940, the Manhattan Project was right around the corner.

A sudden, insatiable demand for uranium in the U.S. — one order alone was for 60 tonnes — put the mine and refinery in business again. The remote Arctic site was suddenly a critical player in the global military industrial complex.

By 1942, Eldorado had contracted with the United States military to supply uranium for the Manhattan Project, which produced the first atomic bomb. The Canadian Government expropriated both the mine at Great Bear Lake and the refinery at Port Hope as part of the war effort. Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited was nationalized just before WWII.

In 1943, a secret pact between Prime Minister Churchill, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Mackenzie King was made in Quebec City.

“The leaders of the U.K., the U.S., and Canada agreed they would build a weapon of mass destruction, which became the A-Bomb. And they agreed on two more things,” notes Ms. Hozer. “First, they would never use it on each other, and second, that they would tell each other before they used it.”

“Canada is not a bit player on the world stage when it comes to nuclear weapons. That is the story we tell,” says Mr. Finkelstein.

Uphill Battles

When Mr. Hatch and Mr. Finkelstein pitched the project to CBC five years ago, it was greenlighted almost immediately.

“The timing could not have been worse,” recalls Mr. Hatch. “We got a green light on a Friday — but then Covid hit. On Monday we were told ‘don’t do a thing’.” Production only started in spring 2022.

Nonetheless, “I feel very privileged that the CBC documentary channel, which chooses fewer than 20 documentaries a year, chose ours. I’m really happy we got a chance to tell this story,” says Mr. Finkelstein. “And I think we tell it well.”

Atomic Reaction screens at The Regent Sunday 24 November at 4pm. The producers and director will be on hand for a Q&A after the screening.

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