What happened to Cape Breton Island? In particular, North Sydney?
It used to be a booming town. Fish plants, steel plant, coalmines, Marine Railway and CN workers in the thousands. Retail businesses all along Commercial Street. Thousands of workers making good money, cashing their checks on a Friday at the local banks and spending their hard-earned wages locally.
Commercial Street North Sydney, vintage post card. (Source: Tom MacDonald, Pinterest)
Thousands of workers making thousands of dollars.
And then, seemingly overnight, it was gone. Who was to blame for taking all our main industries away? Not the unemployed workers. It was our elected governments of the day. All three of them
The very same governments that are still governing us out of Halifax and Ottawa. The same political parties that have been allowing Cape Breton Island to be short changed on the equalization funding out of Ottawa via Halifax for at least the last 30 years.
We didn’t have good political representation back when our industries were shut down and it appears we still don’t.
We need stronger political representation from our elected MLAs and MPs and less “whatever it takes for the party.”
Richard Collis
Big Bras D’Or
