Who was Morty Schulman, you ask? and why was he in Deloro?

Dr. Morton Schulman was a Canadian politician, businessman, broadcaster, columnist, physician and Ontario Chief Coroner, and he may have been the original force behind the Deloro Clean-up (except for one unnamed Deloro citizen) In the mid 1960s he embarrassed the provincial government when he found them to be disobeying provincial health and safety laws. He was fired and then ran for elected office and won. Here is an excerpt from his 1979 book “Member of the Legislature”. The chapter is entitled “Arsenic and Old Tories”

Deloro 1983 before tailing covered (2).jpg

……………………. In April 1970, I received a letter from a resident of Deloro, a tiny town in eastern Ontario, complaining that arsenic was being discharged into the Moira River and Lake from an old abandoned refinery. The poison level was so high that cows drinking from the lake had died. The writer went on to say that complaints to Ontario's Water Resources Commission had received no response whatsoever.

I drove down to Deloro and found an amazing sight: 400,000 tons of bright blue tailings covering some fifty acres were lying in a huge dump beside the Moira River. Streams of blue tinted water ran steadily from the dump into the river. And through it all stood long dead trees and vegetation, all petrified by the copper and arsenic. The residents of Deloro were in no personal danger for they all drank well water, but everyone downstream was at risk.

The Ontario Water Resources Commission had said that the safe level of arsenic was 0.05 parts per million but tests of the surface water ran at 0.42 parts per million. And the water at the bottom of Moira Lake read at an incredible and lethal 400 parts per million. Several medical studies, dating back to 1929, had shown that drinking water with arsenic in it or even swimming in such water can produce cancer. Therefore, I went down to the vital statistics department and examined the cancer rate for that area (Hastings, Frontenac and Prince Edward counties). I discovered that it was rising 75 per cent faster than the rest of the province.

Moira Lake then had three hundred cottages on its shores, eight tourist establishments and two boys' camps. It seemed to me that I had stumbled onto something of terrible and urgent importance. I went to the Legislature and demanded immediate action, but I was astounded by the response.

Dr. C. R. Link, the local Medical Officer of Health issued a statement, "In my opinion and in the opinion of the Ontario Water Resources Commission and the Department of Public Health there is no danger of people developing cancer." Energy and Resources Minister George Kerr said, "The lake water is drunk only by a small proportion of the cottagers . . . and there is no danger involved in swimming." Health Minister Tom Wells said, "The incidence of cancer in Hastings and Frontenac Counties is slightly below the average for the province of Ontario." He went on that "the levels of arsenic in Moira Lake are no longer considered a health hazard." The two ministers also issued a common statement: "There is no evidence to substantiate charges by Dr. Morton Shulman that residents of the Moira River watershed are in danger. . ."

Things simmered down for a few days and then a report was leaked by an unhappy official in the Water Resources Commission which flatly contradicted the reassurances from the two ministers. This report stated that the concentration of the arsenic was ten times the safe level for human consumption. Suddenly George Kerr got the message. In a statement on June 5, 1970, he said that the government was taking action against the refinery "which will require it to eliminate all leaching certainly this year." He concluded, "We are getting the necessary evidence with the idea of placing the company under a ministerial order. It is also quite possible that we will prosecute the company."

I was quite satisfied with Kerr's statement, but unfortunately I had been totally taken in. No prosecution ever took place. More important, neither did the arsenic leaching cease. Seven years later, after I had left the Legislature, I discovered that the arsenic was still heavily running into the Moira system and in 1977 Minister Kerr promised a cleanup for 1978. As of this writing, (1979) nothing has been done.

It turned out that Wells' comments about the cancer rates were just about as accurate as George Kerr's original statement. In January 1978, Michael Rychlo, a water quality engineer with the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, published a book called The Arsenic Papers. I was not too surprised to read the following:

“Claims by one doctor of increased cancer mortality rates in Hastings county due to the arsenic levels in the waters there were dismissed on the basis that the doctor was misinformed as to the statistics. Health officials referred to the publications of Ontario Vital Statistics to show that the claims were unsubstantiated. The health experts listed 77 deaths from all malignancies in 1971 for Hastings, which was supposed to make the rate for that county 83 deaths per 100,000. However, what the experts failed to include was the number of female deaths which was 68. The 77 deaths stated were only for males.
The correct total meant that Hastings did in fact show a death rate higher than the provincial average. If the rates were inspected again for 1972, it would have been demonstrated that Hastings had a death rate from cancer much higher than the Ontario average. “

In matters of public health as in politics it is not enough just to be right. You must, in addition, get your message to the public. In the case of the arsenic and cancer danger in Eastern Ontario, I failed to reach and alarm enough people.”