Please note that CBC does not endorse the opinions expressed in comments. Comments on this story are moderated according to our Submission Guidelines. Comments are welcome while open. We reserve the right to close comments at any time. Join the conversation Create account. And one man, says Frank, gives their story some hope: Stan Rogers. Fog rolls in over a wharf in Canso. T he Fogarty's Cove that Stan Rogers sang about was story-enhancing fiction, but the real cove had exactly the kind of untouched beauty that kept him coming back to the region.
Before bureaucrats, drillers, consultants and quarry companies started floating through the Black Point lands, the worst problem the site had was damage from all-terrain vehicles rumbling through, leaving a drained bog and crushed beer cans in their wake.
One of the best ways for the public to challenge a project like the Black Point Quarry is on the ecological front. Quarries are not tidy operations. Companies have refined drilling, blasting and excavating techniques, but at the end of the day, they still have to drill, blast and excavate. It's an inherently disruptive business; if the project does deliver the Canso area 60 long-term jobs, it could look like a remarkably different place by the time it's decommissioned and rehabilitated, which could be in or later.
Frank and Brian Fogarty have delighted in challenging the various rounds of documentation and draft reports that the governments require, knowing it's the most likely chance to slow or stop the quarry. But the likelihood of that is rapidly shrinking. The Black Point Quarry's Draft Environmental Assessment Report says the project is "not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects, taking into account the implementation of the recommended mitigation measures.
The public was invited to comment on the report until early February. The assessment bodies have until April 28 to review those comments, meaning, as of publication time, the project could be approved at any moment.
Until then, the Fogarty brothers are hanging hope on a key feature in the draft report: its proposed lack of third-party oversight. They filed comments lamenting the developer's freedom to use the "honour system" the report offers Vulcan, granting the company the freedom to monitor and mitigate the environmental impacts of its own quarry, for things such as erosion, surface-water quality and effects on cultural heritage.
The Sierra Club joined the Fogarty brothers in commenting on the draft. Atlantic chapter director Gretchen Fitzgerald feels that the process so far has prevented the public from sufficiently evaluating Vulcan's compensation and mitigation plans. As it stands, "They're making the rules and then get to referee," she says. In documents and interviews, Vulcan officials have promised to follow the letter of the law and do everything they can to monitor for and mitigate ecological damage.
Environmental self-monitoring, common for projects such as this, often forces the public to trust a company to handle its own problems. That trust isn't exactly high among those who've studied the Black Point Quarry plan.
The Fogarty brothers are concerned that family grave sites and artifacts may be lost to the quarry, and insist that they have a representative present for the excavation of potential heritage sites. Some locals worry that noise could disrupt the quarry's neighbours for decades. Others are concerned that wetlands could be damaged, trickling trouble through the whole Canso Peninsula.
And officials from Kwilmu'kw Maw-klusuaqn, a Nova Scotia Mi'kmaq rights organization, still have unaddressed concerns about how the project will affect fish habitats. The Chedabucto Bay side would be even more at risk of water disturbances from silt or fuel leaks, and the increase in shipping traffic as a result of the quarry could pose a risk to inshore fishermen. In interviews, both Vulcan and the municipality were eager to bring up a letter the Guysborough County Inshore Fishermen's Association signed in support of the quarry.
To project proponents, it's evidence that they've won over an industry that could feel deeply affected by the quarry. In a sense, that's true: They've worked with the association to modify their plans and shipping routes to avoid traps and reduce harm to marine habitats. But the fishermen's support is actually tentative. Companies have always come and gone from the Canso area; they've learned not to trust the benevolence of industry.
This is not the only case where the Black Point Quarry's biggest supporters have been selective in describing public support. Fishing nets in Philips Harbour. S ierra Club officials think there's an ethical dimension to the Black Point Quarry that's not being discussed enough: Dangling economic benefits in front of an already hard-off community, they suggest, is unfair.
Guysborough's own research gives this theory some weight. In , the municipality conducted a phone survey of people and found that 79 per cent expected the Black Point Quarry to have a "positive impact" on the community. Like the Fishermen's Association letter, Vulcan and Guysborough — the two parties who would likely profit most from the project — like to trot out the poll as a sign of significant public support.
But there is fine print. Less than 20 per cent of those surveyed suggested they were "knowledgeable" about the project. And their efforts to engage locals have been mostly unrequited; only 11 per cent of residents surveyed had actually gone to the most recent major public meeting.
If there truly is a common public opinion about the fate of Fogarty's Cove, even the municipality's own survey suggests it is an uninformed one. When asked about this, economic-development director Gordon MacDonald did not answer directly, acknowledging instead that skepticism or low knowledge is inevitable, especially given the early stage of the project. Like the inshore fishermen's conditional backing, he says, "that support is based on certain assumptions, so [they] want to see the fully developed plan before [they] confirm that support.
Local concerns about preserving the natural environment around Fogarty's Cove, however, have been measured before — by Stan Rogers's cousin, Stephen Bushell. In the early s, fearing that the Crown land around the cove might some day be developed, Bushell helped collect more than 1, signatures on a petition to preserve the coastal habitat under Nova Scotia's Wilderness Areas Protection Act.
Opinions can change over time, though. Former Canso mayor Ray White signed the petition all those years ago, but is now firmly in support of the quarry. After hearing what a quarry would bring the community, "The conclusion I came to was that it was a viable project with a positive impact. Numerous locals The Globe contacted were fearful that speaking out against the quarry might hurt loved ones praying for jobs it would bring. Artist Steven Rhude, a petition organizer who used to live in a cottage facing Black Point, is less deterred.
Glynn Williams has some alternate solutions. Like Stan Rogers, Williams came to the region from away and was captivated. The Bay Street entrepreneur loves Guysborough with all his heart and a good portion of his wallet. He's poured millions into the municipality: He runs a local inn, brought in a successful craft brewery and coffee roastery, restored part of the Guysborough village's main street, and owns a local golf course. He is, in many ways, Guysborough's biggest booster.
Williams was drawn to the region for its natural beauty, but has spent the last few years watching the municipality propose numerous environmentally destructive megaprojects. In a candid letter to The Globe and Mail, he argues that this economic strategy plays the wrong game with the local economy: Governments are striking out trying for home runs when they should be playing small ball.
Investing in small business, he writes, may be the key for Guysborough's turnaround. There's an echo of Stan Rogers's story in Williams's: He came to the region from away, he was captivated and he's using the skill he knows best — business investment — to put it on the map.
And like Stan, maybe Williams can inspire a newer, home-grown generation to follow his lead. It loses confidence when large projects get announced and expectations are not fulfilled.
A weather vane in Canso. Stan Rogers had family scattered across Canso and neighbouring villages. V ulcan has high expectations for the Black Point Quarry. The Alabama company was drawn to the project for a number of reasons. We're sitting in DesBarres Manor — the inn owned by Glynn Williams — before Vulcan officials take me on a hike through the property. He keeps on listing: "Chedabucto Bay is ice-free, which would allow us to ship year-round," Lieth says.
If the draft environmental plan is approved as is, it would take a couple of years for construction to begin — but only if Vulcan decides to move ahead. It reserves the right to pull out. It's happened before, next door to Nova Scotia near St. Andrews, N. Lieth even moved there to work on it, only to watch Vulcan pull out of the project. For all the effort that Vulcan and its predecessors have put into turning the land at Fogarty's Cove into a quarry, they could give up at the drop of a hat.
Guysborough officials, of course, are aware of this possibility. It won't deter them. For opponents of the quarry — for Brian and Frank Fogarty — this means Vulcan pulling out would be less a win than the start of a new battle.
They could, however, seek a small victory on another front. Nova Scotia's Expropriation Act leaves little room for appeal, but there's legal principle left for the brothers to explore. Coincidentally, it was established by the Supreme Court of Canada in a case on the other side of Guysborough County.
When the causeway to Cape Breton was built half a century ago, a man with nearby property had his land expropriated for the rock beneath it. He was compensated with the market value of the real estate, but appealed his way to Canada's highest court, which ruled that "what is expropriated is really building material rather than land. It's legally well-established that compensation should be based on market value at the time of expropriation. But the causeway case helped establish that the principle of "special adaptability" expands the definition of what, exactly, the market value is of.
Better compensation wouldn't be the same as getting the property back. Nor would it reverse what frustrates Brian and Frank Fogarty the most: that the municipality didn't give their family enough opportunity to build a case against expropriation. So they intend to keep fighting on any front they can find. Their dream for Fogarty's Cove is simple. They want it protected by law so that their family and the public can enjoy its natural peace.
And maybe, they've idly wondered, it could host some kind of homage to the man who made it famous. June Jarvis has a little cove of her own. Just south of Canso, she and her husband keep a cottage they call Sanddollar, and from the sunroom you can watch the Atlantic roll in a dozen metres away. At 79, she still marches out to the cove to bathe, using dish soap to lather in the salt water, full of life after decades spent caring for others.
She abandoned a career as a writer in her 20s to look after aging relatives, kids of her own and later, as a housing-authority manager, her whole community. So even though it was June who convinced her nephew Stan to put Fogarty's Cove on the folk world's mental map, she only ever had the time to hike out there once.
Fogarty's Cove is memorailized in a famous song written by Canadian folk legend, Stan Rogers. In a cruel irony, the land owned by the Fogarty family was expropriated from them by the muncipality in order to make the quarry possible, destroying the beauty celebrated in Stan Roger's song. Because of the scale of the project - which will result in hectares of land being quarried, the destruction of wetland systems, large bulk carriers travelling to a relatively pristine coastline every year, and operations lasting 50 years - we asked for this project to receive the highest level of enviornmental assessment possible, an arms-length review panel.
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