The mess that was left behind

The current issue of the Legion magazine contains an article by Natalie Salat on a below-the-radar campaign to identify and clean up an unknown number of postwar chemical and biological weapons. This follows earlier reporting by the magazine on the Department of National Defence's Warfare Agent Disposal (WAD) Project to identify sites and set priorities for cleaning them up.

Legion's report celebrates the determined efforts of two concerned Cape Bretoners, antiques dealer Myles Kehoe and dentist Michael Ojoleck who have led agitation for government action. "Although Canadian government documents show that, in 1984, a review of CB weapons dumpsites by DND was undertaken," says the article,"those results were not made public. Nearly 20 years later, the department began its $11-million WAD Project."

"After World War II, thousands of tonnes of agents such as mustard gas, phosgene and lewisite were jettisoned on land or at sea by numerous countries, including Canada, the United States, Britain, Russia, Denmark and Germany," said the article. "Canada used to be one of the major producers of these weapons. While dumping of chemical and biological weapons at sea has been outlawed since the 1970s, untold quantities of hazardous materials remain on the sea floor."

There is a concern that the metal drums, bombs, depth charges and other containers in which these agents were stored are corroding, and that the leaked agents could cause considerable damage to humans and the environment. At the same time, pinpointing the locations of munitions dumps has been made more difficult by several factors. For one, the men tasked with postwar weapons disposal in some cases let go of their toxic cargo before reaching their intended destination--so documentation may be inaccurate. For another, official documents have been lost or destroyed. And finally, ongoing military secrecy has been a common obstacle, in Canada and abroad. Concerns have been amplified since oil and gas exploration has been permitted to go on in the vicinity of these sites

Kehoe said scientists, First Nations communities and fishermen, including his brother, have been noticing many unexplained phenomena with the sea life around Nova Scotia, including a proliferation of cancerous lesions on the fish and dual-sex crab. Nevertheless, licences have been granted to oil and gas companies to conduct exploration activities near, if not directly over, CB dumpsites off the coast of Nova Scotia.

Legion, for those who are not familiar with it, is one of those magazines that gets on with its mission and reaches a large number of Canadian homes without much notice being paid in the industry. It has a circulation of 320,000 and readership of more than three quarters of a million. It seems to be transforming itself gradually from what it had been -- largely a house organ for the Royal Canadian Legion -- into a magazine for a mature audience, with articles and information that is occasionally unexpected and surprising. This is probably a necessity, since even Korean War veterans are now in their 70s and many of the Second World War veterans are dying off.