News 1. Mayoral candidates face off for the first time Halifax’s three mayoral candidates debated each other yesterday, at an event hosted by the Downtown Halifax Business Commission. Zane Woodford attended, and reports on the candidates’ replies to questions from moderator Norma Lee MacLeod. While Taylor reiterated his stance that he doesn’t care who you […]
Moose River betrayal
In 2008, the approval of the Moose River gold mine was conditioned on the mining company giving the province hundreds of acres of conservation land within four years; 12 years later, there's still no approved plan in place.
The Halifax Examiner is providing all COVID-19 coverage for free. On March 31, the Australian company St. Barbara, which last year acquired Atlantic Gold with its open pit gold mine at Moose River and a project to open three more mines along Nova Scotia’s Eastern shore, sent investors a COVID-19 update. It stated: St Barbara’s […]
Atlantic Gold is waging a propaganda blitz in Nova Scotia
By now, many people in Nova Scotia will have seen the Atlantic Gold ads on television, read words of self-praise from the company in newspaper opinion pieces, or received Atlantic Gold flyers in their mailboxes. For the past month or so, Atlantic Gold has been blanketing the province with its propaganda. As the Halifax Examiner...
Roughed up by the RCMP at a public meeting, John Perkins sues Atlantic Gold and the cops
Sixty-eight-year-old John Perkins of Earltown is striking a blow for democracy after he says he was forcibly hauled out of a public meeting by an RCMP officer last May. Perkins held a news conference in Halifax yesterday to explain why he is filing a lawsuit against Atlantic Gold Corporation which hosted two information sessions on […]
After the gold rush
Nova Scotia is ignoring the toxic legacy of past mining manias while rushing headlong into the next
If learning from past mistakes were a government tradition in Nova Scotia, the current government would not be exhibiting all the symptoms of gold fever. But it is, and it looks like a raging bout of the affliction. In the past few years, it has amended legislation based on recommendations made by the industry’s cheerleader-in-chief, […]
Setting the record straight on Atlantic Gold’s spin job
It has been fascinating — but discouraging — watching as Atlantic Gold and the RCMP try to justify the violent arrest of John Perkins at an information session on mine tailings dams and management, which the Vancouver-based mining company hosted last Thursday in the firehall in Sherbrooke on Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore, a fiasco you […]
RCMP violently remove and arrest citizen at public meeting about gold mine
A security guard working for Atlantic Gold called police to have John Perkins removed from a public information session on the proposed Cochrane Hill mine.
The above video is a segment of a longer video taken by author Joan Baxter. To view the full video click here; a more complete version of events is captured by the video taken by Scott Beaver, which is included in whole below. If yesterday’s information session was meant to convince the people of Sherbrooke […]
The $722 million deal
An Australian company is buying the Vancouver company that owns Nova Scotia’s largest gold mining operation; what’s in it for us?
Here’s the deal. On Wednesday, May 14, an Australian gold mining company called St. Barbara Limited, with one gold mine in Australia and a second one in Papua New Guinea, agreed to pay $722 million for Atlantic Gold Corporation, which operates one open pit gold mine in Nova Scotia, has proposed three more along the […]
Spill at Moose River gold mine raises environmental concerns
Atlantic Gold springs an effluent leak, plugs a new mine, and sells itself to investors
Cover photo: the tailings facility at the Touquoy gold mine. Photo: Saint Mary’s River Association Atlantic Gold’s manager of environment and permitting, James Millard, calls it a “spill” or a “loss of control” caused by a “gasket failure.” By whatever name, the event happened on the night of January 3, 2019, at the company’s open […]
Like blood from a stone: trying to get information out of the Department of Energy and Mines
Late last year, Nova Scotia’s Minister of Energy and Mines, Derek Mombourquette, penned an op-ed that his department sent out to the media. As I mentioned in Morning File on January 16, 2019, the opinion piece was entitled “A little piece of Nova Scotia, everywhere,” and it claimed that the province’s mining industry was “something we can all take […]