Pro quarry group stages Digby rally

A core group pushing government ministers for a quarry received more than passing support during a Saturday rally in Digby. During the two-hour event, Bilcon staff stood in the background as car after car and truck after truck honked in support of the rally message.

Although Bilcon management would not consent to interview requests, project manager Paul Buxton said the rally was the pro-quarry community's event and they, like media, had been invited to attend.

Earlier in the week, the government released the results of a joint federal-provincial review of Bilcon's proposal for a basalt quarry and marine terminal at White's Point on Digby Neck. As submitted, the proposal failed to gain the panel's endorsement, but the final decision rests with federal and provincial environment ministers.

That decision is expected to come within the next month.

But within days of the decision, there was a noticeable increase in real estate for sale and at least one more business was added to the existing list of turnkey operations already on the block.

That not only concerns longtime Centreville residents like David and Linda Graham, it simply highlights how desperately they need jobs - and why they support any private industry willing to setup shop here.

"To be quite honest, I've even been thinking about selling," said David Graham over the noise of horns. "The way things are, we're even losing our healthcare. If things continue getting worse, we're not going to have anything around here."

He said he hoped the media coverage of the rally, and the car horns, would send the message to ministers that his community wants the quarry to be approved.

"I honestly can't see how they can turn this quarry away," he said. "It would be really nice and I hope they see things in a different way from what the panel did."

Randy Nesbitt runs a gas bar on Digby Neck. He remembers when there were at least three others, but said with the population shrinking, there's not as much business to be found.

"To support a business, you need a fair amount of full-time people and traffic," said Nesbitt. "And the traffic is shrinking. People are moving away and the one's left are ageing."

Most recently, a planned whale watching interpretive centre for the region was allocated to Digby because the communities on the islands could not agree on its location. Nesbitt said many opportunities presented to residents had failed to materialize and the whale watching centre was just one more. If things continue, next there will be no schools because there won't be enough children to fill them.

When asked if a quarry were the right answer for the region, he said Canadians have a history as global resource traders.

"This is what we do," said Nesbitt. "We send our lobster away, we send our fish away, we send our scallops away - basically because we're a sparsely populated country."

At 48 years old, Tiverton's John Eisan said he didn't like the panel decision because of the vocal and well-funded opposition. He said he's been waiting for "a good job" for 18 years or "I'll be one of the people who'll have to go out west to get a job."

"I'd really like to see the quarry go," said Eisan. "I'm getting older now and I'd like to get a good job before I'm so old nobody would hire me."

Although a couple of people opposed to the quarry parked across the road, they made no effort to disrupt the rally.

In the end, time will tell if the rally was the beginning of a concerted effort to pressure ministers, or a last gasp by a community desperate for an economic engine to stave off its fade into history.