ABSTRACT
Canada is a country that has never had a nuclear weapons programme and the impacts of atomic warfare and accidents can seem historically distant and geographically remote. However, the uranium mined and used in the bombs detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki was taken from Canadian ground and decimated a generation of Dene (Indigenous) people in Canada’s north. In a nearby community in Newfoundland, the government permitted the American air force base to be a storage place for nuclear weapons. In three English literature courses, the author took students for a tour of the former air force base where these weapons were stored. This allowed the students to see that the distant events of Hiroshima and Fukushima have a real-life corollary in their own landscape. This made students more aware of the global and connected impacts of nuclear energy and arms. She prepared students for this experience through a variety of active learning exercises where we looked at the writing of Japanese Hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors), Canadian poetry about Hiroshima, and more recent writing about the more-than-human impacts at Fukushima. There was measurable success in the areas of historical awareness, student motivation, scholastic achievement, and ethical accountability. These learning exercises were extended to the holocaust and colonisation of Indigenous peoples.
