Ben Eoin Update A spectator (as I’ve come to think of my readers) alerted me to the sale price of The Birches at Ben Eoin Country Inn — it sold for $675,000 early in 2018. I’ve updated this week’s Ben Eoin story to add this piece of information and toRead More

Is there no editor at the Cape Breton Post? Has the Saltwire Network, which owns the paper, instituted some sort of buggy, beta, artificial intelligence app to vet its stories? How else to explain a front-page Father’s Day feature that began like this: Just in time for Father’s Day, five setsRead More

“No leasing land to China even for one day” I heard this story on Democracy Now as I was drifting off to sleep the other night and woke up the next morning thinking I’d dreamt it, but I looked it up and it was real. Here’s the Voice of AmericaRead More

Call Mr. Campbell On Friday morning, I heard CBC reporter Tom Ayers’ interview with Shannon Campbell, Donkin Mine vice president, who attended a public meeting in Port Morien last night (organized by District 8 Councilor Amanda McDougall) to discuss residents’ concerns about coal trucks traveling through their community. On theRead More

Donkin Moncton-based Radio-Canada reporter Elissa Serret has done some great work tracking down and speaking to three of the miners fired from the Donkin Mine last fall. (Here’s the link to the original French television item, which features some rather over-dramatic effects and has French-speaking actors playing the miners, who did notRead More

I have been keeping a jaundiced eye on the Cape Breton coal trucking story since the 1980s when my friend Leo Evans was shining a public spotlight on the decision by Devco to “rubberize” a part of its coal transportation system.   Made no sense then – makes no sense now.Read 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

Here’s the press release Kameron Coal Management Ltd issued on Tuesday: For Immediate Release – Organizational restructure at the Donkin Mine Donkin, NS, November 7, 2017 – Today Kameron Coal Management Ltd. announced an organizational restructure that resulted in a reduction of the workforce at the Donkin Mine in Nova Scotia. “TheRead More

News that the owners of the Donkin Mine have been hit with 29 safety violations and 10 compliance orders since operations began in February received markedly different coverage from the CBC and our local, pro-coal, daily newspaper. Here’s the story as it appeared on the CBC website: And here’s theRead More

“It was tragedies like that, unfortunately, that led to better health and safety regulations in the mines and made it a lot safer for generations to come,” said Bob Burchell, the United Mine Workers of America’s (UMWA) interim international representative for Canada, on the eve of a July 25 ceremonyRead More