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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 northern Alberta oilsands city to Hiroshima after the atomic bomb.

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On-air personality Chris Byrne at Rock 97.9 then 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. No more Heart of Gold in the heart of the oilsands.

“We’re going to continue with our ban,” said Byrne, who said he used to play two or three Young tunes a day.

Byrne had declared Wednesday to be a “No Neil” day after a news conference Young held the previous day in Washington, D.C.. It was there that he declared Fort McMurray to be a wasteland.