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

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

Coal Dreams Did you know that fluctuations in the market price of coal have a direct impact on the geological conditions in coal mines? When the price of coal rises, these conditions magically improve. It’s an economic-geologic phenomenon begging for further study, in place of which I am simply offeringRead More

I began my mining career in 1977 and have been an eye witness to the Donkin saga since the day Pierre Elliot Trudeau announced his National Energy Program (NEP) in the 1980s. The NEP earmarked $2 billion dollars for expansion of the Cape Breton coal industry and Donkin Mine wasRead More

Donkin The Donkin Mine saga took an unexpected turn last week with the sudden death of coal baron (and Kameron Collieries owner) Chris Cline in a helicopter crash. Weirdly, this was followed almost immediately by (yet another) rock fall in the mine itself. Fortunately — yet again — nobody wasRead More

I’m writing on Wednesday morning and the front page of the Cape Breton Post (print edition) features a story about the management of the Donkin coal mine failing to report a “massive roof cave-in,” in contravention of provincial regulations. To be completely factual: the front page of the Post features aRead More

Jody Dukart is the Auditor/Teller for Canada of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), a position he took up in October 2017, following the retirement of Cape Breton’s Bobby Burchell. Although the Donkin coal mine re-opened by Kameron Coal Management is famously non-union (it’s owned by the Cline GroupRead More

Bernie in coal country McDowell County, West Virginia is coal country. Although they got into the game a little later than we did here in Cape Breton — their first large-scale mines were developed in the mid-1800s — they made up for lost time and by the 1950s were regularlyRead More