Real quarry report all about the people

Back in June, I was mesmerized for 13 evenings reading Andy Moir's reports on the public hearings into the Bilcon proposal for a quarry on Digby Neck.

I knew full well for which side Andy, the environmentalist, was rooting, but it was his depiction of the human side of the panel’s workings that I found most powerful.

Take Kemp Stanton, for example, the fisherman from Whale Cove whose family has fished off White’s Cove for about 250 years. "Kemp is a swell guy. If you ever need a casting agent's fishermen, Kemp's your guy," wrote Andy. "He talks with a Digby Neck drawl. He uses words like, 'we was agin it.' And he’s smarter than pretty much everybody in the hearing room, and he’s certainly the only one amongst all the scientists, environmental experts and Bilcon entourage who actually knows what it’s like off of White’s Cove because he’s out there on the water half his life, if not more."

Andy said Kemp imparted some of his traditional knowledge about the area. "And he talked about his basic distrust of governments and the inability of government to regulate anything. He had example after example. Like a recent decision to let an oil company leave a bunch of pipe on the bottom of the ocean “They was supposed to take that up, then the minister just said, 'go ahead and leave it.' He didn’t consult with anyone."

Among the many other characters Andy depicted was Clytie Foster, an 81-year-old woman who had him smitten. “I am proud to be a Digby Necker,” Ms. Foster told the panel. “I have loved Digby Neck since my earliest memories of living there. I have loved that narrow strip of land with its two islands lying between beautiful St. Mary’s Bay and the awesomely majestic Bay of Fundy. I was always so aware of their water surrounding me. The love of Digby Neck and the sea is in my blood, my very being. To walk the beaches there, at Trimpany, Seawall, or Gulliver’s, is to me a spiritual experience. My heart is full of gratitude to the Great Creator for these beautiful places.”

Foster spoke of growing up poor on the Neck. “But we were millionaires in those things that really matter.”

Spoke of the horror

She talked of her family home and her ancestors - all Digby Neckers. And she told the panel of her horror when she heard of the quarry. “With such a heritage behind us, how can we do otherwise than raise our voices in protest against the quarry on behalf of our ancestors? They struggled to establish their homes on Digby Neck. They helped make it what it is today. Those previous generations passed in to us basically intact and as beautiful as when they lived there. We should pass it on to future generations undamaged, not a wounded strip of land, with holes in its sides.”

So, like many Nova Scotians, I rejoiced last week to hear that the Clytie Fosters and Kemp Stantons and other Digby Neck folk were heard by the environmental review panel. And I agree with Les Smith of the Clean Annapolis River Project (CARP) that the cruelest form of denial is delay. Both federal and provincial governments must act quickly to adopt the recommendations.

Hopefully a moratorium will go into effect on the entire North Mountain until a coastal management strategy comes into place. Along with CARP, I agree that a "tipping point of citizen awareness" has been burnished in this province by the five years of discord in Digby County. We have come to a "rejection of old guard, unmitigated industrial growth economics, a further rejection of the old boys' network politics and, finally, a rejection of our status as the natural resource base for an unsustainable U.S.-based and owned North American economy."

In fact, the panel found the "proposed injection of an industrial project into the region would undermine and jeopardize community visions and expectations, and lead to irrevocable and undesired changes of quality of life." Having determined that the likely burdens of a quarry would outweigh the benefits, it’s "not in the public interest to proceed with the Whites Point Quarry and Marine Terminal development."

I’m praying that this new attitude will prevail on another kindred front. Given the currently inflated price of uranium on world markets, we could see mining companies start pressuring the province to lift the uranium moratorium. A recent story in the business section of The Chronicle-Herald has raised concern that low-profile public 'energy forums' scheduled for next month might be about lifting the hard-won 1982 moratorium.

Natural resources minister David Morse has pledged he won't drop the ban without public approval, but he knows exactly how much revenue Newfoundland, for example, gets from uranium exploration.

Meanwhile, up on Boulardarie Island, they’re blasting away wetlands at the provincially-approved Pioneer open pit coal mine....