juno

juno The centre was approached by French locals looking to oppose the project but after consultation with its board, which includes veterans, decided not to stand in way of the plan which will see turbines developed some 10 kilometres offshore. "In a perfect world one might say we'd prefer not to have it, but I think it's something that goes with what happens in the environment today," said Cooper. "To me it's no different than a freighter going by in the channel." Yet that visual change to the landscape is exactly what historian Rudyard Griffith points to when explaining why some might have a strong reaction against the turbine plan. "We are changing forever the visual landscape of a globally significant Canadian site," said the co-founder of the former Dominion Institute.


To be able to walk those beaches, and see them and imagine them as if it was 1944 is, in some ways, essential to keeping that historical memory alive, and in turn that memory shapes and forms our identity today." Griffith points out that the historical site is not just the beach, but also the waters beyond which brought Allied troops to the shore of Nazi-occupied France. Having turbines constructed so close to where so many fought would be a jarring image at a site preserved to remind visitors of the sacrifices made. "The coast of Normandy is vast, you'd think they could have the ability to station the windmills at other places along the coast that provide their needs for clean energy but don't mar the visual landscape of Juno beach." The European Platform Against Windfarms is among those disapproving of the project.

It's not offshore, it's along the coast, it's only 10 kilometres from the D-Day beach," chairman Jean-Louis Butre, said in an interview from Paris. "People are really upset about what's going on, so upset that we received comments from everywhere." The organization -- a collective of 483 groups -- has recorded more that 2,300 signatures for an online petition decrying the project, which includes comments from Canadians. Butre said in addition to being plainly visible during the day, the flashing lights of the turbines would create a "discotheque" effect around the D-Day beaches at night. Among the complaints he's received he even mentions a call from a retired Royal Air Force pilot. "They say 'we are going to bomb those wind turbines,"' he said with a chuckle.

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