That Time We Almost Buried the Power Lines on Charlotte Street

Editor’s Note: This is Part I of a series that will continue until I find some answers or give up, whichever comes first. You’ll find Part II here and Part III here.

 

Since I began the Spectator in 2016—long before this most recent controversy over the utility poles on Charlotte Street—I have had readers suggesting I look into that time the City of Sydney was on the verge of burying the power lines on its main shopping street, but had the plug pulled unceremoniously on the project due to political bickering.

I didn’t actually remember this incident myself and until a couple of weeks ago, none of my sources had provided a date for it, but in early October, a reader got very specific:

I recall that a Contract had been awarded to J&T Van Zutphen for the upgrade of Charlotte street in Summer of 1984, which was to include the burial of existing overhead lines on poles to buried piping under the sidewalks.

Armed with this information, I decided to hit the microfilm (first at the McConnell then at CBU) and see what I could discover. Even with a date as specific as “summer of 1984,” it took hours to piece together the story (largely because I started my search in January 1984 when I should have started either two months earlier, when the plan was first announced, or seven months later, when it all started to fall apart) and I still  haven’t come to the very end of it, but I have enough to start writing, so that’s basically all I’m doing this week.

As I was reading the Cape Breton Post from 1984, I kept thinking of that L.P. Hartley quote:

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

In many ways, 1984 does seem like a foreign country and I’ll elaborate on some of that in a separate article, but in other ways—particularly in terms of how our municipality approaches big infrastructure projects—it was all-too depressingly familiar.

I really enjoyed researching this piece, I hope you will enjoy reading it and I dedicate it to everyone who asked me to look into Pole-gate.

 

This is, above all, a political story, so I’ll begin with a brief survey of the political landscape at the time.

John Turner and Brian Mulroney on cover of Maclean's magazine, 1984In March of 1984, having served 16 years as prime minister and facing some very bleak opinion polls, Pierre Trudeau took his famous walk in the snow and decided to resign. On June 16, the Liberal party chose John Turner, a former finance minister, as his successor. Turner, who didn’t have a seat in the House of Commons, announced he would run in the general election which he called just nine days after assuming office. The election date was set for September 4.

Turner’s chief opponent would be Brian Mulroney, who had won the leadership of the Progressive Conservatives in 1983. Like Turner, Mulroney had no seat in the House of Commons when he won the leadership, but Central Nova MP Elmer MacKay had stepped aside, allowing him to win a by-election in what was considered a safe Tory seat.

Trudeau’s resignation triggered a flurry of knock-on resignations by his ministers, including Deputy Prime Minister Allan J MacEachen, the MP for Cape Breton Highlands Canso, who announced his retirement and was promptly appointed to the Senate, one of a flurry of controversial appointments made by the departing Trudeau (and honored by the in-coming Turner).

As 1984 opened, Russell MacLellan was the Liberal MP for the riding of Cape Breton-The Sydneys. He would retain his seat in the fall election, which Mulroney was to win by a landslide (here in Nova Scotia, the PCs took nine of the province’s 11 seats).

Provincially, John Buchanan was serving his second term as premier. His PCs would win re-election in their own landslide that fall (the 1984 provincial general election was held on November 6), although in a sea of Tory Blue, Vince MacLean, the Liberal MLA for Cape Breton South, and Paul MacEwan, the Cape Breton Labour MLA for Cape Breton Nova, would retain their seats.

Municipally, we were a decade away from amalgamation—and a year away from our 1985 Bicentennial—and the City of Sydney was headed by Mayor Manning MacDonald.

 

Concern about the deterioration of the main shopping streets in its various communities had prompted Nova Scotia to introduce its Mainstreet Program in 1978. As this 1983 article by C. John Thorpe for the Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada explains, the program was an attempt to undo some of the havoc wreaked by shopping malls, the first of which had opened in this province in 1958. (Thorpe blames television, which allowed us to see the “different, more materialistic way of life in Upper Canada and the States,” and led to our becoming “beholden to the automobile.”)

Most of the province’s Mainstreet projects involved communities with populations under 3,000, but in the early 1980s, the City of Sydney established the Downtown Parking and Development Corporation (DPDC) to administer a city Mainstreet Program that was to take the form of a $5 million, five-block facelift for Charlotte Street.

Examples of NS Mainstreet projects

Examples of Nova Scotia Mainstreet projects. (Source: Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada via Dalspace)

As the Cape Breton Post explained in August 1984:

The Mainstreet Program projects are normally done with only provincial-municipal involvement, with the municipality and the local merchants paying 40% of the costs, but in this case the federal government approved the project as one of several downtown redevelopment projects, pressed by C.B. The Sydneys MP Russell MacLellan. The feds paid the city’s share of a $480,000 pre-engineering study of the project, and agreed to pick up the city’s $2 million share of the overall cost.

Elsewhere the Post noted that the “remaining 40%” cost of the Charlotte Street project would be:

…shared between the provincial government, Maritime Tel and Nova Scotia Power Corporation, key players in a project that involves the burial of utility lines and the removal of unsightly power poles and overhead wires.

MacLellan, according to the paper, had announced the federal funding the previous autumn:

The MP, who’s taken considerable flak from several aldermen for not bringing enough federal money into the city, announced the federal decision to participate in the provincial-municipal program at a press conference called unilaterally last fall. C.B. South MLA Vince MacLean acknowledged the unilateral action angered some local and provincial politicians, but said it had to be done “to make the provincial government get on with the project.”

MacLean told the Post:

I was pressing [Provincial Development Minister] Rollie Thornhill to do something for Sydney’s main business section and he told me it would help if we could get some funds from Ottawa. I asked Russell MacLellan to assist and he did.

 

On 16 August 1984, the Post‘s Doug McGee reported that MacLellan had “turned up the political heat on Premier John Buchanan,” holding a news conference in Sydney the previous evening with Senator Allan J. MacEachen and Regional Development Minister Remi Bujold to announce that Ottawa had approved its share of a $12-million Sydney redevelopment package (of which the Charlotte Street makeover was just one element) that could start “within minutes” of the province’s signature:

“I think there’s just one man who has to make the decision on the province’s behalf and I hope he does it soon,” MacLellan told a Sydney news conference, leaving no doubt that he was referring to the premier.

Buchanan had given an interview in which he “denied any knowledge of a provincial commitment to the five-block refurbishing of the city’s downtown core.” But “sources” within the Downtown Parking and Development Corporation, headed by Sydney businessman Bob Martinello, told the Post the $5 million project “had been worked out with the provincial department staffers step by step.”

Downtown Sydney Development announcement, CB Post, 1984

Source: Cape Breton Post, microfilm, CBU.

Sydney Mayor Manning MacDonald, according to the paper, “felt the impasse was simply due to the Tories’ unwillingness to give the federal government credit for a project in the midst of an election campaign.”

Cape Breton South MLA Vince MacLean echoed this, telling the Post‘s John Campbell he was “absolutely astounded” by “broadcast reports that the premier has denied knowing anything about provincial funding for the five-block redevelopment project.”

“Either he’s not being briefed by his Development Minister Roland Thornhill, or he’s just trying to score political points against Russell MacLellan,” MacLean told the Post. “And knowing the way he’s centralized everything in his office I’m sure he’s just working a deliberate political tactic.”

MacLellan said the Charlotte Street project was to have been underway in August “for completion by December 1 to ensure that Charlotte merchants [were] able to take full advantage of the Christmas rush.”

As McGee noted:

The federal people declared…that they were ready to ink the agreement then and there, formally committing Ottawa’s $8-million share, but no one showed up to represent the province. Mr. MacLellan accused Premier John Buchanan of delaying for partisan reasons.

The MP told the Post negotiations over the project had been ongoing for nine months and then added a rather dubious twist, claiming “the timing of the project start” had “nothing to do with the election” scheduled for September 4. But as McGee noted, the news conference had been called on such short notice that plans for the waterfront development portion of the project, which had been put “on the plane” in the hopes they “would arrive before the meeting broke up,” didn’t make it in time.

McGee described those plans this way:

The waterfront work between the public wharf and the foot of Townsend Street is to include a new timber crib wharf creating a small boat basin adjacent to the Royal Cape Breton Yacht Club, a full length boardwalk for the basin to the foot of Townsend with landscaped surroundings, a plaza behind city hall, a look-off at the foot of Falmouth Street, and the removal of the dilapidated wharf remains. There will be lighting with buried cable and some filling of shallow areas to create open green spaces and seating areas.

As for the Charlotte Street project, it was to include:

…new underground services and buried utility cables, new lights, paving and sidewalks, and creation of min-parks and seating areas. The overall design is intended to enhance the district as a shopping and recreation area that will be particularly attractive to bro[w]sing pedestrians.

The look will be greener and more colorful because of numerous plants, colored gravel and surfaces, and brick. There will be a lot-sized mini-park, complete with fountain, at the corner of Pitt and Charlotte and intersections will be designed to break the visual monotony of the street.

 

Mayor MacDonald added his own, equally dubious, twist to the story, telling the Post that “the city wasn’t aware of an imminent start on the project and hadn’t been asked for the necessary development permits.”

The Mayor told McGee that while city council was “not entirely in the dark” it hadn’t been “privy to the detail” and was “surprised when Mr. MacLellan met council the day of his news conference to go over the Charlotte Street project but didn’t outline the waterfront phase that he announced later that afternoon.”

“I can tell you council knows very few details about the entire project,” the mayor said.

Funding announcement for Centre 200

As the debate over Charlotte Street redevelopment played out, the feds also announced $2 million to refurbish the old Sydney Forum, a move seen as a first step toward the construction of a new facility.

MacDonald said council had “seen little of the redevelopment plan since the overall concept study was presented a couple of years ago,” but allowed he would be “pleasantly surprised and extremely pleased” if “federal and provincial governments to get together on any development in the city.”

The paper’s “source” in the DPDC questioned how the Mayor could have been blindsided by the project, given the city was “well represented” on the corporation’s board by “the mayor, city manager, solicitor and Engineering Director Frank MacDonald as well as Alderman John Kennedy, chairman of council’s Development Committee”:

While the final announcement was being left for the federal, provincial and municipal politicians at a formal ceremony, there was no reason for the mayor to be uninformed about the project start, or for the engineering department to be unaware of the plans.

In fact, it had been planned to get under way earlier, but the start was delayed so the street wouldn’t be torn up in the midst of the Tall Ships visit, said the DPDC spokesman.

An earlier story had also noted that the Charlotte Street project had been one of a number of issues discussed during a meeting between the mayor and then-Deputy PM MacEachen in December 1983.

I can’t say for sure why the mayor didn’t greet the offer of millions for downtown development with open arms, but I think it’s reasonable to note that MacDonald was, at that time, actively seeking funding for his own pet project, Centre 200, which MacLellan had opposed on the grounds that it “didn’t offer the best return in terms of job creation and downtown redevelopment.”

The editorial writer for the Cape Breton Post had another explanation for the behavior of everyone involved:

Politicians must take ‘stupid pills’ every morning: that’s the only explanation for why their behaviour is so objectionable so often.

 

This brings me to a detail of this story of the almost-buried power lines that everyone who contacted me mentioned, namely, that construction materials for the project were actually in place downtown, ready for a redevelopment that never materialized.

This, it turns out, was absolutely true. The DPDC had awarded a tender to Zutphen Brothers for the Charlotte Street work, as the Post reported on 16 August 1984:

…Zutphen Brothers has been moving men materials and equipment for the past week to the site of the Charlotte Street phase of the program. The Port Hood construction firm was low bidder on a contract that still has no formal funding, but Mr. MacLellan said the contractor has showed good faith and won’t be left high and dry no matter what happens to the joint agreement.

Another article notes the contractor was “all set up at the corner of Charlotte and Pitt streets” and ready to go.

And then there’s this;

Post photo of construction materials for Charlotte St makeover, 1984

Source: Cape Breton Post, microfilm, CBU

 

On 17 August 1984, Betsy Chambers (the Post‘s “Halifax Bureau”) wrote that:

…dreams of a revitalization of a five-block area of Charlotte Street have been put on hold by the provincial government because of an intergovernmental spat over authority to call tenders, Development Minister Roland Thornhill admitted Thursday.

The dispute has left Zutphen Brothers of Inverness sitting on a corner of the project area with tools and materials, without the necessary contractual guarantees to proceed…

Roland Thornhill

Roland Thornhill. (Source: Cape Breton Post, 17 August 1984, microfilm, CBU)

Thornhill told Chambers the province had not authorized the DPDC to call tenders although, as she noted, a DPDC spokesman had told the Post they felt they had “the provincial government’s blessing to go head with the project.”

Thornhill said the province had been reluctant, initially, to accept the federal funding MacLellan offered for Charlotte Street “for fears it might be diverted from some other provincially targeted use,” but had eventually given its approval.

But the day of MacLellan’s news conference, wrote Chambers:

…federal authorities were on the phone to Halifax officials in the Department of Development offering more money for additional improvements to the project that would bring the total cost up to $12 million.

Thornhill told Chambers:

We are certainly going to analyze that offer now.” The analysis may not be speedy, however, he said. “It will go through various structures—management board, cabinet, and our department of course.”

Asked whether it might take at least until after the election he smiled and said, “You’re cynical.”

Chambers’ story appeared under the headline, “Revitalization Program on Hold, Says Thornhill.”

How it went from “on hold” to “not happening” will be the subject of next week’s article.