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Port Wallace Gamble: the real estate boom meets Nova Scotia’s toxic mine legacy

Part 1: The making of a toxic mess and the uncalculated costs of previous gold rushes.

March 1, 2020 By Joan Baxter 4 Comments

This is Part 1 of a three-part story about the toxic legacy from historic gold mines in Nova Scotia, which its citizens will be paying many millions of dollars to try to clean up, and how the contamination at just one of these sites — Montague Mines in HRM — is still affecting lives today, […]

Filed Under: City Hall, Environment, Featured, Investigation, News, Province House Tagged With: Alexander Heatherington, arsenic from mining, Atlantic Gold, Barry's Run, Canadian Extractive Industries Transparency Measures Act (ESTMA), Clayton Developments, Cochrane Hill gold mine, Damas Touquoy, Department of Energy and Mines (DEM), Department of Lands and Forestry (DLF), Francis Paul, gold mining, gold mining pollution, Goldenville, James Paul, John Drage, John Hartlen, John Pulsiver, Kerry Rowe, Lake Charles, Lake Loon, Linda Campbell, Lisa Jarrett, mercury, Michael Parsons, mine tailings, Mining Association of Nova Scotia (MANS), Mitchell Brook, Montague Mines, Moose River gold mine, Nova Scotia Auditor General Michael Pickup, Nova Scotia Lands, Paul Paul, Raymond Plourde, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, St. Barbara Limited, Touquoy mine

Provincial budget update: increased surplus and debt reduction, but also large bills for cleaning up historic toxic mines and the Yarmouth ferry

July 25, 2019 By Jennifer Henderson

“You’re richer than you think” Scotiabank used to say in its marketing campaign to prospective customers. Today we learned the Province is in better financial shape than we were led to believe a year ago. Audited financial statements for the year March 2018–March 2019 show the province had a surplus of $120 million, four times...

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Filed Under: Featured, Province House, Subscribers only Tagged With: abandoned gold mines, arsenic, Bar Harbor ferry terminal, Boat Harbour, Finance Minister Karen Casey, Goldenville mine, Lands and Forestry Minister Iain Rankin, mercury, Minister Lloyd Hines, Montague Mines, NDP leader Gary Burrill, provincial budget, Yarmouth ferry

Northern Pulp Mill’s missing environmental data

The mill says its effluent comfortably meets federal regulations, but a new study published by Dalhousie researchers suggests there is no way to know.

July 8, 2019 By Joan Baxter 1 Comment

Cover photo courtesy Gerard James Halfyard. If Premier Stephen McNeil is wavering on the Northern Pulp / Paper Excellence file, entertaining notions on amending the Boat Harbour Act so that effluent from the Pictou County pulp mill can continue to flow into the lagoon after January 31, 2020, he would do well to put off […]

Filed Under: Environment, Featured, Investigation, News, Province House Tagged With: Alison Reilander, Boat Harbour, Boat Harbour Act, Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA), Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Canso Chemicals, Chief Andrea Paul, chlorine, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, dioxins and furans, Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), environmental studies, Friends of the Northumberland Strait, Gerard James Halfyard, Jessica Romo, Matt Dort, Meenakshi Chaudhary, mercury, Minister Margaret Miller, Northern Pulp Mill, Northumberland Strait, Pictou Harbour, Pictou Landing First Nation (PLFN), Premier Stephen McNeil, Pulp and Paper Effluent Regulations (PPER), Terri Fraser, Tony R. Walker

After the gold rush

Nova Scotia is ignoring the toxic legacy of past mining manias while rushing headlong into the next

June 25, 2019 By Joan Baxter 3 Comments

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, […]

Filed Under: Environment, Featured, Investigation, Province House Tagged With: 2012 Geological Survey of Canada, Adele Poirier, arsenic from mining, arsenic in well water, Arsenic Task Force, Atlantic Gold, Bruce Nunn, Christian West, Cooper Quinn, cyanide, Department of Energy and Mines, Donald James, Dustin O’Leary, Enfield, Gary Andrea, George O’Reilly, gold mining, gold rush, Gold Show, grants for mineral exploration, Historic Gold Mines Advisory Committee, historic mines tailings sites, IAMGOLD, Jacob Hanley, James Millard, John Wightman, Linda Campbell, Lisa Jarrett, Lori Blackburn, Magnum Resources, mercury, Mineral Resources Development Fund (MRDF), Mining Association of Nova Scotia (MANS), Mining Society of Nova Scotia, Montague Mines, Moose River gold mine, Osprey Gold, Perry MacKinnon, Prospectors and Developers Association Convention (PDAC), Prospectors Association of Nova Scotia, Rick Horne, Sean Kirby, St. Barbara Limited, tailings, tailings dams, Touquoy mine, Waverley

Nova Scotia has a mercury problem

Facilities associated with Northern Pulp Mill's proposed effluent pipe are immediately adjacent to a mercury-contaminated toxic waste site left over from the Canso Chemicals operation

April 9, 2019 By Joan Baxter 1 Comment

Cover photo: A Mad Tea-Party by Lewis Carroll with the Hatter, March Hare and Alice. It turns out that using a lot of mercury, as human beings have done for centuries — in everything from haberdashery to gold production to medicine — wasn’t such a great idea after all. Although this realization came only in […]

Filed Under: Environment, Featured, Investigation, News, Province House Tagged With: Abercrombie Point, Adele Poirier, Canso Chemicals, David Depew, Dillon Consulting, Domtar, Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), erithism mercurialis, Federal Contaminated Sites Action Plan (FCSAP), gold mines, Grassy Narrows First Nation, Liberal Party fundraiser, Linda M Campbell, mercury, mine tailings, Minimata Convention on Mercury, Minimata disease, Neil M Burgess, Northern Pulp Mill, Nova Scotia Environment (NSE), Olin Corporation, Paper Excellence, Peter Hodson, Pictou Harbour, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Reed Paper, United Nations Environment (UNEP), Wabaseemoong First Nation, Wabigoon River

The Canso Chemicals mystery: With the chemical plant long gone, why is the company still alive? And what about all that mercury pollution?

March 7, 2019 By Joan Baxter 6 Comments

Canso Chemicals hasn’t produced any chemicals for 29 years, but — contrary to what I wrote in the Halifax Examiner in “Northern Pulp’s environmental documents: missing mercury, a pulp mill that never was, and oodles of contradictions” — the company lives on. Sort of. For two decades Canso Chemicals produced chlorine for the pulping process […]

Filed Under: Commentary, Environment, Featured, Investigation, Province House Tagged With: Abercrombie Point, Canadian Industries Limited (CIL), Canso Chemicals, Choong Wei Tan, Curtis Richards, Dillon Consulting, Ferguson MacKay, Fisheries Minister Jack Davis, Friends of the Northumberland Strait (FONS), ICI Canada, Jack Pink, Jill Graham Scanlan, John M. Olin Foundation, mercury, Minimata disease, Northern Pulp, Northern Resources Nova Scotia Corporation, Nova Scotia Pulp Ltd., Olin Corporation, Pictou Harbour, Pierre Ducharme, Pioneer Chemicals Limited, Pioneer Companies LLC, Scott Maritimes, Seymore Thomas Dewtie, Sinar Mas Group, Widjaja family

Northern Pulp’s environmental documents: missing mercury, a pulp mill that never was, and oodles of contradictions

March 5, 2019 By Joan Baxter 9 Comments

Cover photo: “Point D,” where treated Northern Pulp wastewater currently flows from Boat Harbour into the Northumberland Strait, just a few hundred metres from Pictou Landing First Nation. There is much to wade through in the documents Northern Pulp submitted to Nova Scotia Environment on February 7, 2019, when it registered its “Replacement Effluent Treatment […]

Filed Under: Commentary, Environment, Featured, Investigation, News, Province House Tagged With: Bell Bay Tasmania, Boat Harbour, Bruce Chapman, Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA), Canso Chemicals, Chief Andrea Paul, Clean the Mill Group, Dave Gunning, Dillon Consulting, dioxins and furans, Dr. John Krawczyk, Environment Minister Iain Rankin, Environment Minister Margaret Miller, Gary Porter, Greg Egilsson, Gulf NS Herring Federation, Human Health Risk Assessment (HHRA), Jamie Simpson, Kathy Cloutier, KSH Consulting, mercury, Mi’kmaq Conservation Group, Northern Pulp, Northern Pulp effluent, Northern Pulp environmental assessment, Nova Scotia Environment, oxygen delignification system, Paper Excellence Canada, Pictou Harbour, Pictou Landing, Pictou Landing First Nation (PLFN), Point D, Rachel Boomer, Terri Fraser, Toxikos

Fool’s Gold

Nova Scotia's Myopic Pursuit of Metals & Minerals

May 16, 2018 By Joan Baxter 8 Comments

A Halifax Examiner / Cape Breton Spectator investigation. Part 1: Welcome to the Gold Rush There’s a 21st century gold rush starting in Nova Scotia, just as industrial gold mining is increasingly coming into disrepute around the world. It has been described as an “environmental disaster” which often leads to contamination of water sources on […]

Filed Under: Environment, Featured, Investigation, News, Province House Tagged With: Alan Septoff, Anaconda Mining, arsenic, Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, Atlantic Gold, Bill 76, Brilliant Earth, Bruce Nunn, Canadian Mineral Investment Forum in Beijing, Cape Breton Spectator, Chamber of Mineral Resources of Nova, Chilean Metals, China Mining Conference in Tianjin, Chrissy Matheson, Department of Natural Resources (DNR), Diane Webber, Earthworks, Ecology Action Centre, El Salvador, Finance Minister Karen Casey, First Nations Membertou Band, Fool's Gold Part 1, Greater Cape Breton Partnership, IAMGOLD, Joan Baxter, Joan Kuyek, Kluscap Wilderness Area, mercury, Mineral Incentive Program, Mineral Resources Act, Mineral Resources Development Fund, Mining Association of Nova Scotia, Mining One Window Process, Mining Watch Canada, Minister Lloyd Hines, Minister Margaret Miller, MLA Geoff MacLellan, Nova Scotia Business Inc, NS Environment, premier John Savage, Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC), Rachel Boomer, Raymond Plourde, Resource Capital Gold Corp., Sean Kirby, sodium cyanide, Tejas Gold Inc., Touquoy mine, toxic tailings from historic gold mines, Ugo Lapointe, uranium, Water For Life

The Tideline, with Tara Thorne

Mo Kenney. Photo: Matt Williams

Episode #18 of The Tideline, with Tara Thorne is published.

Mo Kenney’s new record Covers is a perfect winter companion — songs from across the rock spectrum that she’s pared down to piano or guitar and turned them into sad ballads. She joins Tara to talk about choosing and arranging them, and opens up for a frank discussion of the alcohol dependency it took a pandemic for her to confront. Plus: Movies are back (again).

This episode is available today only for premium subscribers; to become a premium subscriber, click here, and join the select group of arts and entertainment supporters for just $5/month. Everyone else will have to wait until tomorrow to listen to it.

Please subscribe to The Tideline.

Uncover: Dead Wrong

In 1995, Brenda Way was brutally murdered behind a Dartmouth apartment building. In 1999, Glen Assoun was found guilty of the murder. He served 17 years in prison, but steadfastly maintained his innocence. In 2019, Glen Assoun was fully exonerated.

Halifax Examiner founder and investigative journalist Tim Bousquet has followed the story of Glen Assoun's wrongful conviction for over five years. Now, Bousquet tells that story as host of Season 7 of the CBC podcast series Uncover: Dead Wrong.

Click here to go to listen to the podcast, or search for CBC Uncover on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast aggregator.

About the Halifax Examiner

Examiner folk The Halifax Examiner was founded by investigative reporter Tim Bousquet, and now includes a growing collection of writers, contributors, and staff. Left to right: Joan Baxter, Stephen Kimber, Linda Pannozzo, Erica Butler, Jennifer Henderson, Iris the Amazing, Tim Bousquet, Evelyn C. White, El Jones, Philip Moscovitch More about the Examiner.

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Recent posts

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