Reviews From the Edge

Staring down into the dust and gravel strewn Adams Mine, Gordon McGuinty, a mouthpiece and deal-maker for big garbage, saw a potential gold mine, a solution to Toronto’s waste disposal crisis. Beginning in 1990, and over the course of the next fourteen years, local residents would undertake five separate civil resistance campaigns to thwart McGinty’s mega project, to turn the Adams Mine into a garbage bin. In what reads like a political thriller, Unlikely Radicals: The Story of the Adams Mine Dump by Charlie Angus details how a grassroots campaign left several multi-billion dollar consortiums, two levels of government, and McGunity himself running with their tales between their legs.

            In 1989, when McGuinty first decided upon the Adams Mine, it was still in full-swing. Between 1969 and 1990, the pit, stretching 1,800 feet across and 600 feet deep, was the largest of six mines in the northern township of Timiskaming, supplying millions of tonnes of iron ore to the steel mills of southern Ontario. McGuinty’s plan, to bury Toronto’s trash in the mine—3.2 million tonnes a year, or enough to fill 800,000 garbage trucks—promised environmental sustainability and permanent jobs to a community hit hard by recession. But that was before the massive pit filled with 23 million tonnes of ground water, creating some very complex problems. If toxic leachate got into the water table thousands of acres of farmland would be contaminated—forever. McGuinty’s solution: to pump the water out for a thousand years using untested hydraulic technology. After passing two environmental assessments, the cards seemed stacked against the people of Kirkland Lake.

            Angus frames the battle within the broader historical context of the southern exploitation of the north, echoing the writing of political theorist Chris Hedges and what he termed “sacrifice zones,” communities damned to economic and environmental wreckage in the name of capitalism. Angus, a freelance journalist who moved north to escape the confines of the city, joined the fight against McGuinty because, he felt, basic standards of environmental and political accountability were under threat. It’s through the lens of his experiences working as a researcher, speech writer and public relations consultant that much of Unlikely Radicals: The Story of the Adams Mine Dump War is based.

            Angus exposes the backroom deals between McGuinty and his buddy, Premier Mike Harris, and the silencing and dividing of the opposition, but it’s the undaunted determination of the people of Kirkland Lake which takes centre stage. In fact, the book is, in part, a resource manual for running an effective grassroots campaign, whereby a group of diverse and seemingly opposed groups, aboriginal, Quebecois and Ontarian, led demonstrations, blockades and non-violent resistance right to the steps of Toronto City Hall.

            Angus writes with confidences and a deep understanding of the issues that only an insider could provide, juggling some very complex problems without confusing the reader or detracting from the narrative. Mega industrial projects like the Alberta oil sands and the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric dam in Labrador are becoming the norm. In fact, the Alberta oil sands are expected to grow by 550,000 barrels per day by 2017. According to the David Suzuki Foundation, it has already made Canada one of the worst environmental offenders on the planet. Famed linguist Noam Chomsky once wrote, “The general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community issues guided by values of solidarity, and sympathy, and concern for others, or there will be no destiny for anyone.” What makes Unlikely Radicals: The Story of the Adams Mine Dump War by Charlie Angus a timely and important book is that we, as ordinary Canadians, have the power to change that.

First appeared in Our Times Vol. 32 No. 6.