Page 33 - The Pulp Mill Comes to the Strait

ISSUE : Issue 25

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1980/6/1

out--too much snow or too mild a winter, bad winter for operating in the woods • it was better for them to come out here and pay a bigger price for the wood and then get out of here, than raise the prices up there.to encourage woodlot owners to bring wood out. Because once they got it up, then the woodlot owners wouldn't want to sell again at a low price. That was the reasoning behind that. And that's a fact. So those people didn't want a pulp mill here. And there were interests that didn't want the Stora Koppaberg to come in here be? cause it was a Swedish concern with a special patent on wood processing. And they knew they couldn't compete with them-- and they can't compete with them. And then there's this: a great number of people in politics were also involved in the lumber business. And you see, there are two types of mentality in the forest: the longstick-- that's the man that's interested in lumber, you know, logs--and the people that are interested in pulp--and the people that are interested in logs don't iike to see pulp cut because it's a tree that's not fully developed, not the full potential there. It takes 50 years to get a log, pulp about 25, and you have a market for it. (Let me understand: the government was fighting you, not on where it should be located, but against having a pulp mill at all?) Absolutely. (And it became an issue during the 1956 election.) When they saw it was going to be a popular thing, the Liberals were building them all over the place. (From Leonard O'Neil's notes at that time: "In the '56 election campaign, Henry Hicks, Collie Chisholm, and Clyde Nunn opened the campaign at some kind of club outside Halifax. Hicks told the audi? ence of a 35-million-dollar mill for Sheet Harbour. A few nights later...he assured them of a mill for Pictou Cotjnty. The next night at a meeting at Lower South River, he spoke of a 35-million-dollar mill fur? ther east. The next afternoon he told of a 40-million-dollar mill for Guysborough County.") Henry Hicks promised 5 altogeth? er between Halifax and down here. Even promised one for here. I had been chairman of the Liberal Assoc- iation--but I'm no longer a Liberal, since they bucked us on the pulp mill. See, An? gus L. Macdonald had been premier. I'll tell you about Angus L. He often went back and forth to his home down there in Cape Breton. He'd often drop into my garage, sit down and-eat peanuts and talk. The day the Causeway started--the first load of rock dumped--he came with Chevrier, Fed? eral Minister of Transport, to a joint meeting in Mulgrave of the Port Hawkesbury Board of Trade and the Mulgrave Board of Trade. We outlined our concerns, the men here losing their jobs. Chevrier's reac? tion was that it was purely a local prob? lem. But Angus L. said, "No, It isn't purely local. These people are working people. They don't have funds to enter in? to alternate forms of industry or employ? ment. We've got to do something about it." Then shortly after that, he got sick and I sent 10 dollars to his secretary to get a bouquet of flowers for him, and the 10 dollars was used to buy a mass card for him--he died. And that brought on the ap- UACADIE FETE au CAP-BRETON FESTIVAL ACADIEN FtSTIVAL de L'ESCAOUETTE de L'ARDOISE et CLOtURE a CHETICAMP 24 au 27juillet FESTIVAL ACADIEN du PETIT-de-GRAT 30 juillet au 3aout 20 au 24aout '' o j] x i)ei au cjaout SSt On tft( siiutt clgftt ' NiUi

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