When Margie Hogan slaughters the pigs on her farm, she’ll be thinking of Stephen Harper and Greg Thompson.
Before his election in 2006, Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, promised Margie and all the victims of the Gagetown Atrocity full compensation for all the chemicals sprayed at Base Gagetown. After being elected, he flipped, and appointed Greg Thompson to run a sham of a compensation program that excluded 98% of the possible victims.
In the lush rural Acadian forests of New Brunswick sits the 2nd largest military base in Canada, located 60 miles east of Maine. Base Gagetown was subject to the largest usage of Agent Orange outside of the Vietnam War, part of a chemical program that sprayed over 3 million gallons of Agent Orange, Agent Purple, Agent White, and dozens of other chemicals contaminated with dioxins and hexachlorabenzenes, the most toxic chemicals known to man.
The spray program began in 1956 and continues to this day.
Margie Hogan owns a small farm located near the Base. She was stricken ill by chemical exposure, and her children were born with deformities. Her brother and father worked as civilians on the Base clearing brush and cutting lumber. Both died from illnesses related to chemical exposure. When she joined the Widows on a Warpath in August of 2008 she never imagined that she would eventually go all the way to Ottawa to take on the Government.
Gagetown is a forcefully urgent documentary film about Big Government and little people rising up and fighting for something much larger than themselves. Faced with an absurd, evil bureaucracy, the righteous anger of the victims spreads on screen like toxic sludge.
The Government cover-up was exposed in 2005. In 2010 the victims still fight for justice. The Canadian Government has never admitted wrongdoing or apologized to the 300,000 possible victims.
Troops training at Base Gagetown today in preparation for the War in Afghanistan have no idea of the danger that lurks in the soil beneath their feet.
It sounds more like science fiction than documentary; toxic pesticides designed to kill entire forests, chemicals that destroy DNA, bioaccumulating up the food chain, killing all life in their swath. The Government and big pesticide manufacturers like Dow Chemical want the public to think this is fiction, but the facts are darker and the legacy more grim than the public realizes.
Gagetown follows the Widows on a Warpath, the Agent Orange Association of Canada, and a group of scientists demanding transparency and accountability for pesticide use in the past, present, and future. Pesticides affect us all. From soccer fields and front lawns to the global food supply, we are being exposed to the same chemicals that were used at Gagetown. The past repeats itself. The victims at Gagetown were unaware; how many people know that they are still being exposed to the components of Agent Orange today?