Neil Young performs during the Bridge School Benefit concert in Mountain View, Calif., Oct.24, 2010.THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Tony Avelar
September 11, 2013 - 2:04 PM
FORT MCMURRAY, Alta. - Neil Young can keep on talking in the free world, but Fort McMurray won't be listening.
A local rock radio station stopped playing the Canuck singer's music for a day after he compared the oilsands city to Hiroshima after the atomic bomb.
Chris Byrne at Rock 97.9 asked his listeners if the ban should be extended indefinitely.
Neil supporters were in the majority, but when station staff looked at their email addresses, most came from out of town.
So with local opinion firmly against him, Young has been pulled from the station's playlist.
Byrne says he understands people use "Fort McMurray" as verbal shorthand for the mines themselves.
But he says a little more care is required when it comes to comparing his home town to a nuclear blast that killed tens of thousands.
News from © The Canadian Press, 2013