- Remembering The Scotia Synfuels Project – 1991 Project Promised 2,000 jobs At Donkin & Point Tupper – This is Why I Do Not Give Ink to Mega Strait of Canso projects
By Andrew Macdonald
Tim Houston is the latest in a long line of historic politicians caught up in chasing mega projects for the Strait of Canso region.
Last year, NS Premier Houston flew to New York to meet officials proposing a hydrogen fuel project in the Strait.
I had my fair share of chasing mega Cape Breton projects between 1989-1995 when I was a cub reporter.
Most of the grand job schemes created lots of newspaper headlines, but they never materialized into creating jobs of any kind.
There is a long list of failed projects, a wasteland of grand mega job schemes, which promised hope to job-pressed Cape Breton folks.
Currently, projects being touted in the Strait region, besides hydrogen plans, include the 20-year-old proposed Melford International Container Terminal.
There is a rocket launch facility near Canso, but I do not write about that, nor do I write about Melford any longer, and I am not chasing hydrogen projects.
Past mega job schemes announced in this hardscrabble and job-pressed region since the late 1960s are long gone.
The historical wasteland of grand political schemes and promised mega job generators in Nova Scotia’s Strait of Canso, going back to the 1960s, is well documented in historical files.
Today, other media give lots of ink to hydrogen fuel projects announced in the Strait of Canso, to deliver the hard-pressed jobs in Port Hawkesbury, a gritty and industrial town.
The same Point Tupper Bear Head lands, on the shores of the Strait of Canso where in 1989 a man by the name of Karl Heinz Schribber and Elmer MacKay touted military tank manufacturing is the same land that 15-20 years ago LNG promoters touted for a liquid natural gas terminal. Those LNG proposals fizzed out.
And, now the very same lands are being touted for hydrogen fuel projects.
And then there is the rocket launch project in Canada’s oldest fishing port, Canso.
I do not give any serious ink to grand schemes.
When I began my news career in Port Hawkesbury some 36 years ago, I chased mega job generators – and all of them fizzled out.
I won’t get into the long list, but I will give you a few samples.
Romatt Doors, With Buchanan and Chuck MacNeil funding, an Italian promoter out of Toronto, proposed to make kitchen cabinets in Mulgrave. But, it died, and not a single cabinet was produced. Just ask NDP Robert Chisholm about why this was such a nutty idea in the first place.
American promoters from Philadelphia proposed a big job generator with a coke plant in Port Hawkesbury in 1991. Lots of media ink, but it died. Just as folk in Sydney were tired of the coke plant at Sydney Steel Mill, local politicos were all over the coke plant proposed for the town, despite it being a big possible polluter as coke is a byproduct of steel making.
One time, back in 1990, an Ontario businessman came to Port Hawkesbury and promised to turn garbage into electricity with a garbage conversion plant. Lots of media ink, never happened.
There was a time in the Strait that Mulroney minister Elmer MacKay strongly backed, of all things, for Point Tupper’s Bear Head, in 1989, a German manufacturing plant, near Port Hawkesbury. A large sign went up boldly announcing the future site of Thyssen Industries.
The tank manufacturing plant died out.
Back then in 1989 and I suppose perhaps today, the narrow dirt road into Bear Head and going to a spit of silvery sands on the Canso Strait was known as an isolated and secret spot for amorous couples.
In more recent times we have the Richie Mann mega job project, Melford Container Terminal, grandly announced in 2005 and with an expected operating date of 2008.
Today, the project is still only on the books. Nothing, so far, has come of it. Lots of media ink, lots of hype about being a job generator – lots of hope among Strait citizens, but so far just a promise.
Of course, in 1974 the very Melford tract which Mann touted as a shipping terminal was also the site of a gigantic oil refinery proposal.
New York financier John Shaheen promoted that project.
Shaheen even chartered (rented) the prestigious cruise ship liner, Queen Elizabeth II, and sailed the now-defunct vessel to the nearby Port of Mulgrave for a publicity stunt in 1974.
Then premier Gerald Regan and his Economic Development minister Garnie Brown were aboard the shipping liner that year.
Dressed to the nines and donning a fedora, Shaheen did manage to make flashy headlines in the 1974 edition of the Halifax Herald – one of the news articles on Shaheen’s arrival on the QE II was written by a young lad, then, a cub reporter named David Bentley.
The oil refinery never materialized.
In the 1990s, Brian Mulroney’s ACOA money was easy to be had – even for job schemers.
Back in the 1990s, a structure was erected to become home to a high-end marble tiler from far-flung Italy.
Never materialized. For ten long years, the steel structure and its exposed beams stood as an eyesore for the townspeople of Port Hawkesbury – and then Port Hawkesbury Mayor Almon Chisholm and his town councillors spent the next ten years trying to get the marble plant dismantled.
Called Granitile, it, too died before ever seeing operation – it certainly was not the job generator it was supposed to be.
Back in 1969, Liberal MP Allan J. MacEachen gave an interview to the then news weekly, The Scotia Sun, and he boldly suggested that year that Port Hawkesbury was on the cusp of becoming Nova Scotia’s Third City.
But, his Gulf Oil Refinery in Point Tupper, while built, did not last, and MacEachen’s heavy water plants, for nuclear fuel, were mothballed by 1984 Tory MP Lawrence O’Neil.
So there is a reason I do not in modern times give much ink to mega projects announced as the salvation of job hard-pressed Strait of Canso.
I embed archived 1991 news headlines that had the backing of NS politicians in the NS Tory government.
The project was called Scotia Synfuels. It promised two thousand jobs for miners at the Donkin coal mine and a coal to liquidification plant in Point Tupper.
NS politicians clamoured to support the project, which was being proposed by Alastair Gillespie, a Minister of Industry in the Pierre Trudeau government.
On paper, the project sounded great. It would use high-sulphur Donkin coal and convert it into liquid fuels, employing lots of coal miners.
This project generated a ton of newspaper ink. But, it too, died before a single job could be created – certainly not the 2,000 jobs it promised.
The former Liberal minister wanted Cape Breton Tax incentives, breaks, and loans from the Mulroney government, before committing its own mega millions to the venture.
To its credit, Ottawa turned down the request, and the project died. The only thing left of Scotia Synfuels are archived newspaper articles, and I embed some of the news headlines in this story.
So, there is a reason why The Macdonald Notebook does not chase those grand mega job promises in the Strait of Canso.
The following are 1991 newsheadlines on the Scotia Synfuels file.
