A January storm has covered the bungalows here in sparkling snow. Men wearing gloves and hats pulled over their ears steer snow-blowers in and out of driveways, launching powder into the air.
This small city in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is where the state kisses Ontario. An international bridge connects them across the St. Marys River that flows between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. The river marks the international border between the U.S. and Canada.
Photographer Christopher Katsarov Luna drives slowly. I turn around in the passenger seat to watch Torry Ruddell in the back, her brown hair falling as she hunches over hand-drawn maps of the area. Many houses are colored red, indicating that at least one person there has or had cancer.
“Down there my great-grandparents lived,” Ruddell, 44, points.
“It’s got a red circle,” I notice.
“Yeah, my great grandmother, my grandmother, my great aunt and all of my aunts had breast cancer,” she says in a matter-of-fact tone. “My great grandfather had skin cancer.” Her mother also survived uterine and cervical cancer.
We keep driving. “Those people right here, their son had brain cancer,” she says. “He passed away when we were young, still in high school.”
Source: EHN