This is the text of the leaflet distributed in Victoria BC in August 2011-08-11
Women in Black Silent Vigil August, 2011 

Founded in Jerusalem by Jewish & Arab women working for an end to violence, the movement has spread around the world.
 It is time for nuclear disarmament. We stand in silence remembering Hiroshima & Nagasaki: you are welcome to join us.
On August 6, 1945 the USA dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima; on August96, another bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.  British pilot Leonard Cheshire, on board the plane with that bomb, described the bombing as, “Obscene in its greedy clawing at the earth, swelling as if with its regurgitation of all the life that it had consumed.”

200,000 people died immediately & within days of these bombings; 66 years later people continue to die from the radiation effects of these toxic bombs. Canada provided the uranium for those bombs; the native people who worked at the uranium deposit died and continue to die from radiation-caused cancers also.
Today – USA, Russia, China, Britain, Israel, France, India, Pakistan (and maybe others) have nuclear bombs.

Canada has continued to be complicit in nuclear development by selling uranium and technology for nuclear energy (which also contaminates the world with harmful radiation) and for bombs.
Canada also provides so called & highly radioactive ‘depleted uranium’, used by 22 nations for weapons – bomb casings, guns, tanks and other steel-hardening military uses.   Depleted Uranium weapons were tested in Panama and used in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and now reported to be used by NATO in Libya.   

Nuclear weapons and radioactivity threaten the health of all life systems and undermine the security of human society. Wealth and resources wasted on war-making are needed to create a peaceful and sustainable life for all humanity. Please work for peace and disarmament. Remember Hiroshima & Nagasaki where it all started with ‘tiny’ bombs compared to the enormous destructive power of today’s nuclear weapons.

Women in Black meets every month in Victoria: contact Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. See background articles on this web site