The 73rd anniversaries of the terrible atomic bombings of Hiroshima, on 6 August, and Nagasaki, on 9 August, have just passed.

We commemorated those unspeakable events in our 27 July blog post, which culminated in this Call to Action:

Dear Prime Minister,
Please start to regain a leadership role on nuclear abolition by meeting urgently with world renowned campaigner and Hiroshima nuclear bomb survivor Setsuko Thurlow.

Since the posting of that previous Ceasefire.ca blog post, Setsuko Thurlow herself has written a powerful commentary entitled:  Two minutes to midnight (Toronto Star, 5 August 2018).  Its focus, in part, is the extraordinarily calamitous health consequences of any nuclear weapons detonation on a Canadian city.

Canadians have the right to know from their government whether their cities are targeted by nuclear weapons or how they would be affected by radiation fallout from nuclear explosions in the United States. What emergency measures do the federal, provincial and city governments have in place if nuclear weapons are used?

She goes on to note that, after public hearings were held last fall, Toronto City Council unanimously passed a motion calling on the Government of Canada to sign the new UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

“The Justin Trudeau government recently found its backbone in standing up to bully boy Saudi Arabia,” comments RI President Peggy Mason. Maybe a strong push from city councils across Canada, together with the unanimous recommendation of the Standing Committee on National Defence, which we highlighted in our 27 July blog post, will be enough to finally convince our Prime Minister that the time is right for Canada to regain its legacy of global nuclear disarmament diplomacy.

For the full opinion piece by Setsuko Thurlow, click here: Two minutes to midnight (Toronto Star, 5 August 2018).

Photo credit: Nagasaki atomic bomb (Wikimedia images)