Hiroshima Memorial Day Proclaimed Again in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality
Peace Quest Cape Breton Commends Council for Again Championing the Cause of a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World
On July 12, responding to a request by the local citizens’ action group Peace Quest Cape Breton, the Cape Breton Regional Municipality (CBRM) unanimously adopted a Proclamation declaring Saturday, August 6th, 2022, ‘Hiroshima Memorial Day,’ a day not only to “remember the devastation” of the atomic bombing of Japan, 77 years ago, but also to “renew our commitment to ensuring freedom from the threat posed by nuclear weapons”.
The Proclamation (full text below) condemned “Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons” in its illegal assault on Ukraine, an atomic bravado demonstrating the “utter failure of nuclear weapons to prevent or deter war,” and the corresponding need to “eliminate the nuclear threat worldwide.” The best way to do that, the Proclamation argued, was for “all states, including Canada, to sign and ratify” the 2017 UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), the ‘Ban Treaty’ which entered into force (became international law) in January 2021.
An April 2021 Nanos opinion surveyed showed 74% of respondents – nearly 80% in Atlantic Canada – in favour of Ottawa joining the new treaty, despite Canada’s membership in NATO, a nuclear-armed alliance with a nuclear war-fighting doctrine – including the possible first use of nuclear weapons – identical to Russia’s.
In 2013, under the leadership of Mayor Cecil Clarke, CBRM joined ‘Mayors for Peace’, a global coalition of 8,188 anti-nuclear municipalities in 166 countries, including 110 towns and cities in Canada. “We applaud our current ‘Mayor for Peace,’ Amanda McDougall, and all Councillors,” Peace Quest Campaign Coordinator Sean Howard stated, “for taking this important stand for sanity and survival in a world increasingly imperilled by the possession and spread of these weapons of apocalyptic destruction. Commemorating the terrible dawn of the nuclear age – as CBRM has done since 2020 – symbolically rings the alarm bell about present and future risks”.
Full Text of Proclamation
Hiroshima Memorial Day – August 6th, 2022
WHEREAS: August 6th, 2022 marks the 77th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, followed three days later by the atomic bombing of Nagasaki; and;
WHEREAS: Hundreds of thousands of civilians died in these attacks and tens of thousands more have suffered and are suffering from the wounds, radiation sickness and multigenerational genetic disorders triggered by the explosions; and;
WHEREAS: Today’s 14,000 nuclear weapons, possessed by nine states, are equal in their destructive power to more than one million Hiroshimas; and;
WHEREAS: The illegal and barbaric Russian invasion of Ukraine, and Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons, demonstrates the utter failure of nuclear weapons to prevent or deter war, and the need to reduce and eliminate the nuclear threat worldwide; and;
WHEREAS: In 2013, the Cape Breton Regional Municipality joined the global Mayors for Peace coalition, based in Hiroshima, pledged to work for a nuclear-weapon-free world; and;
WHEREAS: In 2017, 122 states adopted the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which entered-into-force in January 2021; and;
WHEREAS: The Cape Breton Regional Municipality supports the call of Mayors for Peace for all states, including Canada, to sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons:
BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED: that Mayor Amanda McDougall of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality proclaim August 6th, 2022, as “Hiroshima Memorial Day” here in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality. A day to remember the devastation of Hiroshima in 1945, and to renew our commitment to ensuring freedom from the threat posed by nuclear weapons, here and everywhere.
