英語聽力文摘 廣島原子彈爆炸60周年

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Montreal and other Canadian cities are holding memorials on the weekend, six decades after the atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima and killed 140,000 people.

Montreal, which twinned with the Japanese city in 1998, began with a peace ceremony in its botanical garden on Friday evening.

A bell pealed in the garden at the same time as tens of thousands of people were marking a moment of silence in Japan – at 8:15 a.m. Saturday in the Asian city, the exact moment that the bomb exploded there on Aug. 6, 1945.

Setsuko Thurlow, 73, didn't have to imagine the tragedy as she wandered through Montreal Botanical Garden. On that August morning 60 years ago, she was working only two kilometres away from where the bomb detonated about 500 metres above Hiroshima.

Only 13 at the time, she was at her first day as a clerk decoding Allied messages as part of the Japanese war effort. She escaped from the Japanese army building before it burned down.

"I saw the bluish-white flash. I had the sensation of floating in the air," said Thurlow, who now lives in Toronto.

"Because of the strong blast of the bomb, all the buildings were collapsing at that time."

Thurlow, who moved to Canada in the 1950s, said that when she's alone she remembers the horror of the bombing that killed about 140,000 people instantly or within a few months.

She has often retold her story to warn others of the dangers of nuclear proliferation and war.

"I brace myself each time. It's extremely difficult but I also believe it's important to let people know what that tiny, primitive atomic bomb did."

The Montreal Botanical Garden has been holding an annual memorial of the Hiroshima bombing for years.

"It makes you think that we are all sitting or standing around here in a beautiful garden and enjoying our existence – then, all of sudden, such things can happen," said Sonia Dandaneau, who works at the garden.

Pierre Bourque, a former mayor of Montreal, said it's important for the twin cities to continue their special relationship.

"We have to continue to perpetuate this friendship between Montreal and Hiroshima and spread the word all over the world that peace is more important than anything," Bourque said.

Ceremonies will be held in a number of other cities across the country on the weekend to mark the anniversary, including in Vancouver, where children will make paper cranes, the symbol of the anti-nuclear peace movement.

They'll also construct paper lanterns to be set afloat in a pond at dusk to commemorate victims of wars, past and present.

CBC Newsworld will have extensive coverage marking the 60th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.

It will broadcast a special program that looks at the services of remembrance taking place around the world at 5:30 p.m. EDT on Saturday.