April 19, 2009
thechronicleherald.ca/Books/1117392.html
Writer brings scandal to light
Agent Orange spraying in 1960s N.B. an outrage, activist says
By JEFFREY SIMPSON
Sun. Apr 19 - 7:09 AM
SOON AFTER Chris Arsenault started researching the Canadian
saga of Agent Orange he stumbled upon an eerie scene in a New
Brunswick village that highlighted the story’s significance.
The toxic defoliant used by the American military during the Vietnam
War had been tested around CFB Gagetown during the 1960s and some
of the people with whom he’d spoken suggested he visit Enniskillen,
where they’d lived at the time.
"The place was virtually a ghost town," the 25-year-old former
Haligonian says in a recent email interview.
"It was clear people had literally fled in the middle of the night.
Some didn’t even bother to bring their possessions and old family
photographs and furniture were strewn about some of the
abandoned houses."
Arsenault was so intrigued he wrote about it in a magazine article,
his honours thesis at Dalhousie University and a recently
published book entitled Blowback: A Canadian history of Agent
Orange and the War at Home. Arsenault interviewed people who
once lived in Enniskillen, including Doreen Thomas. This is what
she told Arsenault about some of the former villagers:
"Kelly was forty-one years old; she died full of cancer. A nurse
with all kinds of degrees, she knew how to take care of herself. Mom
just died in October. She had diabetes, congenital heart failure; you
name it, she had it. My father died with cancer when he was sixty-six.
My uncle dropped dead. Aunt Mar died of cancer, two of my uncles
died with cancer. My grandfather and grandmother died with cancer.
It involved everybody’s household. Everybody’s household was full
of cancer. The people who didn’t have internal cancer, we had outside
cancer. I’ve had eleven (tumours) removed. My sister died with
spina bifida."
Blowback delves into why the Canadian military and its private
subcontractors sprayed more than a million litres of herbicides in
New Brunswick between 1956 and 1984 — the U.S. Congress had
banned their use on American soil.
Arsenault’s extensive research involved using the Access to
Information Act to ferret out damning documents and produce a
scathing indictment of a Canadian government in denial of its
responsibility for exposing its citizens to a deadly substance.
"Senior Canadian officials did know that dangerous, unregistered
chemicals were being sprayed, yet did nothing to stop it," Arsenault
says, contradicting Dennis Furlong’s 2005 fact-finding mission for t
he Liberal government.
"The Canadian government sprayed chemicals against its own people
at a higher concentration than the U.S. sprayed in Vietnam."
It’s long been accepted as common fact that many of the Americans
who served in Vietnam became sick with cancer after the war because
of their exposure to Agent Orange. That is the same for the Vietnamese,
many of whom suffered birth defects and other illnesses from the dioxin.
But Canadians have only recently realized the extent of their country’s
involvement.
Arsenault explains that the Americans were concerned about using the
chemicals for their counter-insurgency campaign. The Canadians were
curious about how well the substances would control brush.
"The Canadian spraying represents the worst aspects of environmental
management under a market system," says Arsenault, who has been
arrested for his anti-capitalist activism. He was acquitted of unlawful
assembly in January 2004. "The chemicals were simply a cheaper
way of clearing brush than other non-dangerous methods. This was
about saving money, while destroying lives.
"The legacy has been aborted fetuses, deformities, shattered lives,
and cancer. I think a lot of soldiers, the people who are forced to do
the dirty work of empire, are now questioning the super structure
they once faithfully served."
A class-action lawsuit was launched in 2007 by civilian and military
people affected by the spray program. It is still before the courts.
Also in 2007, the federal government announced an Agent Orange
compensation package, which has been criticized for its funding and
its limits on those who can apply.
Staff reporter Jeffrey Simpson freelanced this story.