The most controversial item on CBRM council’s agenda last night was dropped like a hot potato just hours before the meeting. The initial version of the agenda included a staff recommendation that the municipality sell 1,002 acres of land (in the form of five adjacent lots in the Coxheath area)Read More

Having gone on at length about an item that was dropped from the agenda of last night’s CBRM council meeting, I will now review some of the items that actually were discussed—but I warn you, that dropped item will haunt my coverage like the ghost of Hamlet’s father.   Wetlands/BiosphereRead...

Every once in a while, if I’m in the microbiology lab in A wing at Cape Breton University, I remember the late Dr. Erwin Zodrow, walking by with a fossil or microscope slide in his hand. In his last few years of research at CBU, he had a geology researchRead More

Media coverage of the weekend fire at the Donkin Mine may not have answered all the pertinent questions about the incident, but it revealed an interesting truth about the way Kameron Coal operates. According to the Cape Breton Post, the province was alerted to the fire around 7:00 PM onRead More

While writing this week’s admittedly not very cheerful story about how Kameron Coal has co-opted our governments as its communications department, I ran across a 2017 Forbes article about the late Chris Cline’s decision to buy the Donkin Mine and realized just what we’re missing when our coal barons won’tRead More

Kameron Coal Management Ltd, owner of the Donkin coal mine, has received 14 warnings, 19 compliance orders and eight administrative penalties or fines since re-starting operations in September 2022. The CBC published a full list of the violations and it is impressive: Orders:  Sept. 21 – Failure to designate qualifiedRead More

Editor’s Note: The subject line of this email was simply “Donkin Mine”   I am a retired psychiatrist who got to treat one of the men for PTSD who had brought out dead from the Westray mine disaster in ‘92. After the explosion the manager of that mine described itRead...

Really, we should have seen it coming. Former Glace Bay MLA Geoff MacLellan has never disguised his feelings for the Donkin Mine. When the Cline Group, which had bought a 75% stake in the mine from Glencore Xstrata the previous December, announced in 2015 that it had begun hiring, then-MinisterRead More

Coal Face “There’s no stone left unturned when it comes to safety with this company”—CBRM District 8 Councilor James Edwards on Kameron Collieries’ decision to reopen the Donkin Mine, CTV Atlantic News, 14 September 2022 The unfortunate reference to stones—the man is, after all, talking about a coal mine proneRead More

I made my thoughts on the potential re-opening of the Donkin Mine pretty clear in last week’s Fast & Curious but I feel the need to return to the topic, thanks to a Cape Breton Post story under the headline: Coal’s last chance: It may be now or never forRead More