A picturesque Canadian town is hiding a dark secret. It's been linked to more than 200,000 deaths over the years. We're of course talking about the Village of Widows.
But you may also know it as Port Radium, Ontario. Within the town is the Eldorado Mine. At the mine, people mined for radium. Radium mined at the Eldorado Mine was used in the atomic bombs that were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, according to Daily Mail. More than 200,000 Japanese civilians died in the resulting attacks.
But more than that the mine also became linked to cancer for both miners and their families. The town hauntingly became known as the Village of Widows thanks to the Eldorado Mine, which opened in 1932. When the mine first opened, there was hope of it being used to treat cancer, ironically.
Canadian Town's Dark History
Fast forward to the present day and the Canadian government is attempting to clean up the refinery, once used for uranium and radium. Lawrence Nayally, a radio host, opened up about the Canadian's town devastating history and its legacy.
"They talked a lot about the land, right? Because that was their livelihood - a part of them," Nayally said. "And so they would talk about certain areas, especially when we went to Dél??n?, on the lake, just how beautiful it is. All of the historic locations where the famous stories took place. And then they would mention Port Radium,' he continued, 'and just how it led to the creation of the atomic weapons that we know of today."
Nayally also weighed in on the cancer deaths in the Canadian town.
"And so, you know, they talked in a kind of loose way about it. But the sad thing is that, years later, when I was pretty young, they buried quite a [few] people that had a lot of cancer," he said. "They talked about, 'What's causing this?' It would all go back to those mines. Because, you know, what they were putting into the waterways, what they were doing, was very dangerous."
Nayally weighs in on the Indigenous community that lives in the Canadian town.
"A lot of those stories kind of shaped my perception of what could be, and what should be,' he told CBC. "It's really given me a chance to be the best at what I currently am doing, which is storytelling through radio. This is Dél??n?'s story. But this is also the story of many Indigenous nations across the world that had to deal with the cunning ways of industry and government just to be in power, to be wealthy."
