Why this Thunder Bay folk singer brought back his 1979 protest song to speak out against nuclear waste

What's old is new again in the debate around whether to store nuclear waste in northwestern Ontario. 

In 1979, when Atomic Energy of Canada was consulting on its plan to bury nuclear waste near Atikokan,  Thunder Bay folk singer Rodney Brown's gave a five-minute deputation expressing his opposition to the plan. 

That deputation was a performance of his new song, Freight Train Derailed.

Now  43 years later, another process designed by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization has whittled possible burial sites down to two communities including Ignace, a community of about 1,300 150 kilometres north of Atikokan, and 250 kilometres north of Thunder Bay. 

And Rodney Brown is re-releasing Freight Train Derailed, this time with a new music video, to protest the project. 

The plan is for a $23-billion nuclear disposal site where the nuclear waste management organization wants to inter some three million spent nuclear fuel bundles in a sprawling network of tunnels and holes 500 metres below the ground.

The controversial project is nearing the end of a years-long consultation project with communities and First Nations about whether they are willing to host the site either near Ignace or South Bruce, near London, Ont. Organization officials have said they welcome public discourse and debate, while promising a safe solution in line with international best practices. 

People in Ignace are concerned about the long-term environmental and health effects of the project, but others note that it could bring back jobs and business in the economically-depressed town. 

Amid that backdrop, Brown felt the time was right to bring back his protest song. 

"The nuclear industry now, it's not the same kind of panel I saw in '79," Brown said. "Now it's a marketing company."

Brown originally wrote Freight Train Derailed for a play. Though the theatre troupe didn't end up using the song, its theme struck a nerve. Then, just months after Brown's deputation, a train carrying chlorine gas and other chemicals derailed in Mississauga. The accident caused an evacuation that affected 200,000 people.

The seeming increase in rail accidents was wind in the sails of Thunder Bay's anti-nuclear movement.

Brown drove from Thunder Bay to Atikokan to demonstrate against burying the waste in the area. When he arrived, he found mass unemployment due to the recent closure of the Steep Rock Iron Mines.

"The Atikokan people weren't excited about [nuclear waste] either," Brown recalls. "But there were so many jobs lost there and everybody was desperate. They needed jobs and I'm sure it's the same kind of thing now going on in Ignace. Everybody's looking at money and jobs."