In 2000, musician and author Charlie Angus along with fellow citizens in a northern Canadian community stood shoulder to shoulder on a blockade, they wanted to stop their community from having a garbage dump for southern urban communities. The citizens refused to be a “sacrifice zone”.
The battle had started in the late 1980s and was only resolved last year. It involved a large cross-section of the population, and brought together many different communities, First Nation indigenous people, farmers, miners, and Anglophones and Francophones.
“The fix was in. The process wasn’t there to find out what was good or bad about the project. The process was there to get the project approved.”
Four years after that blockade, the musician and author became a Member of Parliament, and is now part of Canada’s Official Opposition NDP party.
He’s now come out with a book Unlikely Radicals: The Story of the Adams Mine Dump War.
RCI’s Wojtek Gwiazda talked to Charlie Angus about the book and about the challenges facing citizens then, and now.
NDP Member of Parliament Charlie Angus in 2005. (Photo: Tom Hanson/CP)
More information:
Unlikely Radicals book web site – here
Between the LInes publisher – www.btlbooks.com
Charlie Angus MP info – here
“…part of it also was the notion of a civic duty. That people were really willing to go to the wall. I think that’s what made us unbeatable.” Charlie Angus
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