Letter of concern by Guysborough resident (and frequent NS Advocate contributor) Alexander Bridge, re this year’s glyphosate spraying program, in Guysborough County and elsewhere, announced earlier this summer. “As a resident of Boylston, Nova Scotia, allow me to share my concerns and extreme disappointment with our provincial government’s weak forestry regulations.”
This weekend’s video features a great song by David Gunning, about fighting back, dedicated to all the people we write about.
This article by historian Lachlan MacKinnon was originally published on September 18, 2014 on the excellent ActiveHistory.ca site. We re-publish this now three-year old article because the gap between mill workers and Pictou County environmentalists the author identifies if anything has widened in the last three years. “Environmentalists must confront the fact that structural power is also wielded against other marginalized groups, such as industrial workers facing the threat of deindustrialization. In this recognition, we can hope to transcend narrow categories such as worker and environmentalist and achieve a broader-based support for systemic change.”
A review of the Mill, the by now quite famous book by Joan Baxter on Northern Pulp and its predecessors. It’s really good, and you should buy it. Meanwhile, activists need to figure out how to heal the split between community and mill workers which only helps the company.
Just another clearcut in rural Nova Scotia. Nothing new here.
About eight hundred Nova Scotians marched to Province House because they hate the devastation of our forests caused by clearcutting and because bureaucrats and politicians aren’t listening to them. To mark this important event we offer up a handful of photos and a transcription of the remarks by Melissa Labrador, a Mi’kmaq woman of the Wildcat community near Kejimkujik.
“What do I miss most about the place? The fun and the beauty. It used to be a very beautiful place,” says elder Molly Denny of Pictou Landing First Nation. Boat Harbour, or A’sek, Mi’kmaq for the other room, is a documentary about the transformation of Boat Harbour from a beautiful body of water, great for swimming, fishing and hunting, to a poisoned dumping ground for first Scott Paper, and now Northern Pulp.
Some ordinary people fighting environmental hazards in their backyards, and a bunch of students as well, showed up at the start of the fall session at Province House, and they aren’t very happy with the Liberal government.
Glyphosate spraying in the face of widespread concerns among rural residents just so that forestry companies can make a bit more money seems pretty outrageous. Yet that’s what’s happening.
Northern Pulp’s proposed glyphosate spraying program may be bad for your health, but that’s not the only problem, says Matt Miller of the Ecology Action Centre. Diversity in our forests will help us weather climate change, and a softwood-only forest is a bad economic strategy.