Cape Breton's Magazine

pie. (You don't see it as malicious, as a back room deal where a lot of money was made but the people of Sydney were hurt?) No. Where would they make their money on that? By the government buying the plant, perhaps? They didn't make a hell of a lot there. I know that, because I was working with the government on it. Hawker-Siddeley sent their top legal man from Toronto down here during those proceedings, telling me that if I continued to buck them on the deal they wanted with the government, they would stop my pension. (You were an advi? sor to the government on the take-over?) Yes. (And at first Hawker-Siddeley wanted more than you thought they should receive?) I think they asked the government original? ly for something like 25 million dollars. At the meetings that followed, I'd ask them awkward questions: what are you going to do with the rail mill? It's shut down now. Why should anybody give you any money for that? The raw materials they had, they had those all priced--I said, they're not worth that, just sitting on the ground, and that's where they'll stay. So finally we got them down and paid them something like 3 million dollars. Between 3 and 4. And Hawker-Siddeley blamed me for most of that. (Incompetence! I still can't believe that's all we have as a reason for what happened to that plant. Weren't they strip? ping it? Weren't they slowly backing out?) They were just abandoning it. Look, the chairman of Hawker-Siddeley, I once heard him say this to some people not connected with either Hawker-Siddeley or DOSCO, wasn't even said in Canada: "You know, eve? ry year they want to spend money on that damn DOSCO plant. When we bought it, we thought we didn't have to spend any money at all on it, just run it"--whatever exact? ly he said, he thought he'd just get money out of it. I smiled and said to myself. People Helping People in Cape Breton Let the staff of the Cape Breton Development Corporation help you build for the future on the Island. We helped a lot of people in the 1970's. The coal industry was revitalized, fish plants and fishermen aided, large scale marine farming was begun, small scale industry helped. We assisted craftspeople and farmers, tourist operators and saw? mills. We helped from Sydney Steel to Nova Scotia Forest Industries. We want to help even more in the 1980's. Call on us. We're here for you. At 539-6300 or . Zenith 07763. THE CAPE BRETON DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION (56)