The record-breaking success of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer shined a fresh light on the changes the development of the A-bomb wrought on America and Japan. But there was another country that was left out of that portrayal. The eye-opening feature-length documentary Atomic Reaction, which is about to receive a new series of high-profile showings, reveals the pivotal role Canada played in making nuclear warfare a reality—and the consequences of that involvement that persist to this day.
With gripping detail and accuracy, the film explains that two essential components of the atomic bomb—a reliable source of high-grade uranium pitchblende ore and a refinery to process the highly radioactive material—were obtainable only in Canada. That was thanks to one Gilbert LaBine, who in 1930 had discovered a rare radium deposit on the shore of Great Bear Lake, near the Arctic Circle in the Northwest Territories, and had then gone on to build his own state-of-the-art radium refinery in Port Hope, Ontario.
The documentary follows the centrality of these developments to the now-famous Manhattan Project, with workers at the refinery toiling away while an international team of scientists and physicists conducted its clandestine experiments with nuclear fission in Los Alamos, New Mexico. We also learn about the tragic effect the Canadian portion of the initiative had on the indigenous men who worked to support LaBine’s uranium mine, many of whom ended up dying of cancer-related diseases in the 1960s. The sobering coda? Today, Port Hope is the site of the largest soil-remediation cleanup in Canadian history, with a budget currently pegged at 2.6 billion dollars.
The movie lays out these momentous and sometimes horrific events with a full flair for drama and a journalistic commitment to the truth. Audiences will have a chance to see for themselves when Atomic Reaction plays the Durham Region International Film Festival (DRIFF) October 24-26, followed one day later by an airing on the CBC Documentary Channel and on CBC GEM starting January 10, 2025. A bit farther down the line, the film will be screened Sunday, November 24, at the Regent Theatre in Picton, Ontario. That showing will be presented by RBC Wealth Management, with all proceeds going to the PECM Hospital Foundation. Executive producers Bernie Finkelstein and David Hatch and director Michèle Hozer will all be on hand for a Q&A following the viewing of their film.
Those three creative principals come to Atomic Reaction bearing a wealth of entertainment-media credentials. Finkelstein is a music-industry legend whose self-founded indie label True North Records has logged 500 releases (40 of them gold and platinum) and netted 40 JUNO Awards, its roster boasting A-list names like Bruce Cockburn, Randy Bachman, Rough Trade, Murray McLauchlan, Lenny Breau and Lighthouse. As an artist manager, he’s handled the likes of Cockburn, Dan Hill, The Paupers, Barney Bentall, and Blackie & The Rodeo Kings. Related ventures have included The True North Publishing Group, which guarded the rights to a library of works by pop songwriters and composers for films and TV. Finkelstein has served as chairman of the Ontario Film Development Corporation and sat on the board of that organization and numerous others, including the Canadian Independent Record Production Association (CIRPA, which he co-founded and is now known as CIMA), the Canadian Association Of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) and the Toronto Arts Awards. He is a member of the Canadian Music Hall Of Fame and the Order of Canada, and has received both the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medal and the JUNOs’ Walt Grealis Special Achievement Award, the highest honour given to a non-musician by the Canadian music industry. His work on Atomic Reaction adds to a film résumé that includes the 2012 Cockburn documentary Pacing The Cage, which debuted on Vision TV.
Hatch is the founder of WhistleStop Productions Inc., which since its founding in 1989 has produced 60 original network television series and numerous one-off, multicamera, live event productions for broadcast. With a focus on cutting-edge sports, magazine and documentary programming, the company has generated 23 original series for Netflix, Discovery Velocity, the Smithsonian Channel and others. Its documentary arm has dug deep into subjects ranging from professional auto racing to Canadian warships’ hunt for terrorists in the Persian Gulf to a 70-year-old man’s dream to set the world land-speed record on the Bonneville Salt Flats. In addition to his work with WhistleStop Productions, Hatch’s extensive programming résumé has included over 500 hours of original, broadcast network programming for Bell Media and ESPN Inc. and 180 hours of television for Blue Ant Media. A lifelong music devotee (and a guitarist in his own right), he’s shepherded documentaries on superstars like Rush and Lyle Lovett, and his six-hour blues docuseries, Cities in Blue (created for HIFI HD and Smithsonian), was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award.
As a filmmaker and editor, Hozer has been making a significant contribution to the Canadian cultural landscape since 1987. Her documentary Shake Hands with The Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire won the 2007 Emmy for Best Documentary and the Audience Award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. Her co-directorial debut with Peter Raymont, Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould, earned a coveted spot on the Academy Award shortlist and a Gemini Award for Best Biography. In 2012, Hozer and her team received the Allan King Award for Excellence in Documentary by The Director’s Guild of Canada (DGC) for their work on West Wind: The Vision of Tom Thomson. Other awards on her mantel include the Canadian Screen Awards’ Donald Brittain Award for her self-directed, -edited and -produced documentary Sugar Coated, and the Picture This Film Festival’s Dodie Spittal Award for her short The Barber of Augusta. More recently, she’s acted as both writer and editor on The Reckoning: Hollywood’s Worst Kept Secret and as an editor on the Frontline special In the Age of AI.
Atomic Reaction is already proving a more-than-worthy addition to this highly accomplished trio’s collective pedigree: The doc received an Honorable Mention at the 2024 International Uranium Film Festival, an event dedicated to nuclear issues that’s been presented since 2011 in Rio de Janeiro. With the film about to go before several entirely new sets of eyes, its own half-life seems to be nowhere near the horizon.
