79th Anniversary of Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
August 6 and 9, 1945

Canada’s Involvement in the Bombings

Port Radium on Great Bear Lake, Northwest Territories, site of the El Dorado Mine (left) where uranium was mined then shipped out, first to Port Hope, Ontario for refining, before ending up in the U.S. for the Manhattan Project.

Canada played a little-known but key role in the U.S. nuclear weapons program since its inception. Canada provided uranium for the bomb used against Hiroshima, and Canadian scientists working in a secret lab in Montreal contributed to the research for the plutonium bomb used against Nagasaki.

The Canadian Council for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR) informs that U.S. President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill signed a secret agreement in Quebec City on August 19, 1943 that stipulated that the atomic bomb would not be used “against each other,” or “against third parties without each other’s consent.” It also established a Combined Policy Committee of six to deal with the bomb made up of three Americans, two British and Liberal cabinet minister in the Mackenzie King government C.D. Howe.

Howe was therefore not surprised at the bombing of Hiroshima and had prepared a statement for the press in advance. Howe said of the unprecedented war crime, “It is a distinct pleasure for me to announce that Canadian scientists have played an intimate part, and have been associated in an effective way with this great scientific development.”

The CCNR points out:

“In 1940, the British figured out how to make an atomic bomb by enriching natural uranium – a slow, difficult, expensive process. In utmost secrecy, they asked the Americans for cooperation, and the Canadians for uranium.

“Following Pearl Harbor, the Americans took over. Uranium for the world’s first A-Bombs was refined at Port Hope for the U.S. Army. At first, it came from Great Bear Lake; later, from the Congo. Some of the uranium was enriched for the Hiroshima bomb; the rest was irradiated in the world’s first nuclear reactors to produce plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb.

“In 1942, the British moved their own plutonium-production research team to Montreal – away from the Luftwaffe, closer to the Americans. Canada paid all expenses, and Canadian scientists joined the team.

“The Montreal Lab focussed on the best ways to produce plutonium for Bombs.[…]

“The decision to build Canada’s first heavy water reactors at Chalk River was taken in April 1944 by the Combined Policy Committee, meeting in the office of the American Secretary of War. It was a top-secret military decision.

“According to the inscription on a large bronze plaque at Chalk River:

“‘A nuclear chain reaction was first initiated in Canada on September 5, 1945, when the ZEEP reactor went into operation here at Chalk River. Originally part of an effort to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons, the reactor was designed by a team of Canadian, British, and French scientists and engineers assembled in Montreal and in Ottawa in 1942-43.'”

The CCNR also notes that “For twenty years after Hiroshima, Canada sold plutonium produced in Chalk River reactors to the American military to help defray the cost of nuclear research. And when Canada gave India a clone of the NRX reactor, India used it to produce plutonium for its first A-Bomb test in 1974.”

(“Canada and the Bomb: Past and Future,” Gordon Edwards, Ph.D., CCNR President.)

(TML Archives. Photos: Library and Archives Canada.)

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