CARBONEAR, N.L. — To the editor:
The Nov. 6, 2019, Compass letter to the editor, "Keep people pollution away from Main Brook", was a rambling confusion of false and conflicting information.
Firstly, as the title of the Compass letter "Late physicist would be happy Carbonear honours his spirit" indicated, the author was speaking for the late physicist, who has been honoured by the council of the Town of Carbonear.
Dr. Davis Earle, whom the walking trail is named after, didn't spend his lifetime at Chalk River Nuclear facility. He spent the last 22 years of his working life at SNO (Sudbury Neutrino Observatory), trying to identify previously unknown properties of the ghostly neutrinos emitted from the sun. This project was successful, and Davis played a major part on the team who was awarded the 2016 Noble Prize in Physics. The discovery they made, that neutrinos have mass, changes man's understanding of creation.
It may play a significant roll in the future, of unraveling the mystery of dark energy and dark matter ─ which makes up 85 per cent of the hidden universe.
As for the history of accidents at Atomic Energy at Chalk River; briefly, there were accidents at the reactor before 1960 and after 2000, which did not have a medical follow up of workers because the risk to them was considered minimal. Dr. Earle was not an employee of Atomic Energy during these accidents but he played an active role in the interim when Atomic Energy of Canada supplied 90 per cent of the world's nuclear medical radioisotopes, which helped save countless lives the world over.
The name given to the Main Brook Walking Trail is in respect of someone born in Carbonear, who spent his working life, not in personal achievement or failure, or in failures of humanity. But to a man who preserved, singularly, in his dream, striving for the betterment of mankind. Fact.
The author of the Nov. 6, letter not only contradicts himself by saying, "Leave the main brook alone! That is all I am saying" because his comments are mostly about other things that have nothing to do with the trail itself. The inferred slanderous comments on the career and character of Dr. Earle, posthumously, is disgraceful, cowardly and totally false.
This is made obvious when one realizes the truth, that Davis Earle's life is best captured by a remark made by the immortal Pythagoras in 54 BC: "The finest type of man gives himself up to discovering the meaning and purpose of life itself ... he loves wisdom for wisdom sake because it is the key to uncover the secrets of nature and himself!”
Phil Earle
Carbonear, NL
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