He remembers: “Growing up you knew about the ‘Irving papers’ and what that meant. It wasn’t until I worked at one of them that I realised the extent of implicit censorship taking place culturally in these institutions. It was all unspoken, but you knew not to criticise the bosses.”
In 2018, residents in East Saint John had to be evacuated after a butane leak at the Irving Oil Refinery – the largest in Canada. For 17 hours, the explosive, toxic chemical poured into the air. In the wake of the incident, Irving Oil was fined just 200,000 Canadian dollars (£110,540). The company purchased 20 homes near the site and tore them down to establish a protected area between the refinery and the community.
By that time Donovan had left the Telegraph-Journal, but remembers how a second incident, an explosion at the refinery on Thanksgiving Day in 2018 that left dozens of workers injured, was reported at the time. “The newspaper ran a headline on the front page that read: ‘Thanksgiving Miracle,’ celebrating that nobody was killed,” he says. “That was one of the times that the veil really came down for the community as well, in terms of an obvious control of the narrative.”
For Donovan, The Cloud Factory is both an act of protest and a refusal to comply with the culture of silence that afflicts Saint John’s media. “It is because I love this place that I need to bring attention to the harm being caused to it environmentally and socially by industrial giants who prioritise profit over human health,” he says. “I understand what happens to monopolised economies in the long-term. It never ends well. Perhaps it is too late to issue a warning on that front, but I feel I must try.”
The Cloud Factory by Chris Donovan is published by GOST Books.
Miss Rosen is a freelance arts and photography writer, follow her on X.
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