The Dominion - Cape Breton

Mi'kmaq to Obstruct Traffic to Fight Oil and Gas Exploration at Lake Ainslie

Moira Peters — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 14:14:51 +0000

First Nations call for a complete halt to drilling in Cape Breton

AULD'S COVE, NS—Mi’kmaq people from Cape Breton and the Nova Scotia mainland are preparing to set up a “partial blockade” of the Trans-Canada Highway in Auld’s Cove, on the mainland side of the Canso Causeway, the access point to Cape Breton.

By 1:30 yesterday afternoon, about 25 people had gathered, setting up flags and signs, and organizing a teepee and food for the warriors and their supporters.

The blockade is in opposition to exploratory oil and gas drilling by PetroWorth Resources, scheduled to begin later this year on the shore of Lake Ainslie in western Cape Breton.

"We’re going to be slowing the traffic down to a bare stop," said Ginny Marshall, pipefitter and mother of four from Potlotek (Chapel Island) on Cape Breton. "But we’ll be allowing people to go through," while handing out information and pamphlets, she explained. "We have to make it known why water is sacred."

Mi’kmaq communities—and many non-Indigenous residents around Lake Ainslie—have been clear in their opposition to exploratory drilling around the watershed, saying that no amount of money is worth risking the pristine water resources that Lake Ainslie supports.

"I’m a pipefitter and I would benefit from this type of job," said Marshall, referring to the development the province says is necessary to the economically depressed region. "But...I’ve seen all the damages that it does...I cannot tell my children, my child...I didn’t try. I let this go. I knew they were going to destroy the water...and money was too important."

Emmett Peters of Paq’tnkek (Afton) emphasized the importance of the action for future generations.

"I don’t know if you’re familiar with the 1752 treaty, [which was affirmed in the 1999] Marshall Decision, where we’re allowed to hunt and fish. So they thought about us 300 years previous. That’s how strong that treaty was," said Peters.

"So now what we’re trying to do is leave something for our children...maybe all it could be is fresh water."

A ceremony is planned for this morning at the blockade site, to which all people are invited.

"We’re going to put up a teepee and we’re going to have a fire, drummers are going come in and drum, sing the honour song and we’re going to have one of our elders say an opening prayer just so everything goes good," said Peters yesterday. "We’re leading, but it’s for all human beings."

Organizers of the action are expecting supporters from Paq’tnkek, Eskasoni, Waycobah, Membertou and Potlotek First Nations. They are also expecting non-Indigenous supporters from the Green Party, Protect Lake Ainslie and the Margaree Environmental Association.

Peter Bernard, a Chief of the Mi’kmaq Warrior Society from Waycobah, estimated this action will last two days.

"We’re trying to do this as peaceful as possible," said Marshall. But she, Peters and Bernard added that they will not give up if the partial blockade doesn’t affect the changes they are looking for: a complete halt on any oil and gas exploration or drilling at Lake Ainslie.

"If they do drill that [exploratory] well, what’s going to stop them from fracking?" said Paul. "It’s going to cost them millions of dollars to drill that one hole. And just leave it? I don’t think so."

Marshall said that if the traffic slowdown doesn’t succeed in stopping PetroWorth’s well, a full blockade will be organized.

"We will take your time...we understand your time is your money," said Marshall. "If no other way is gonna put a stop to this, this is our last resort."

"We’re so lucky to have a place so safe in the world compared to other places," said Marshall. "Blue gold is going to be the next commodity...just like oil, it’s gonna be our water, because water is a key element to life."

PetroWorth Resources could not be reached for comment at the time of publication.

Moira Peters lives and bikes in Halifax. Ben Sichel is a teacher and writer, and editor for the Halifax Media Co-op, where this article was originally published.

Ginny Marshall

Causeway Blockade

Stern Warning

Tim McSorley — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:55:29 +0000

Nova Scotia environmentalists say government must revise lease of public lands to private corporations

HALIFAX—“In 1961 we leveraged a tremendous amount of Crown Land to get a company to come to Nova Scotia,” says Matt Miller, Forestry Program Coordinator at the Ecology Action Centre (EAC) in Halifax. “The focus was only on jobs and wood supply, and we gave them complete and utter control of 40 per cent of the Crown Land in the province, one in nine acres.”

The company in question, Finland-based Stora Enso, has been gone from Nova Scotia for five years, though, having sold its key asset, the Point Tupper pulp and paper mill near Port Hawkesbury, in Cape Breton, to Ohio-based Newpage in 2007. At the time, Newpage inherited the Crown Land along with the mill purchase. Amidst slumping sales and escalating power bills, the mill went into receivership in 2011.

Enter Vancouver-based Stern Partners. Headed by multimillionaire paper mogul Ron Stern, the company is the buyer of choice for the shuttered mill. Details of the purchase are yet to emerge, but Stern has let it be known that the workforce, which at the time of Newpage's demise stood at about 600, stands to be halved. Stern will enter into negotiations with the province to hammer out the purchase, and one of the key items on the table will be the 1961 Crown Land lease, which actually expired in 2011. Many independent woodlot owners, including Miller (who is also an award-winning independent woodlot owner), would like to see the deal revisited in order to better reflect 2012 conditions.

“We are expecting this government to negotiate a new agreement that doesn't sell the whole farm,” says Miller. “That means that one company doesn't have full control over [the crown land].” It would also mean that the company takes on more responsibilities than simply managing wood supplies and creating jobs, he says. Rather, the company would need to uphold the spirit of the Natural Resources Strategy by managing Crown lands to the highest standards possible, and consulting the public on how the land is managed, argues Miller.

Phase 1 of the Natural Resource Strategy (NRS), in 2009, was the last example of public consultation, and the only one ever undertaken by the Dexter government. Many blame this recoil from a decades-old tradition of government-public interaction on the fact that when the Nova Scotia public spoke up—which they did in the thousands in the case of the NRS—they demanded something the Dexter government didn't want to hear: stewardship and accountability of the province's forests, and public involvement in the process. If there were a time to make amends with the original intent of the NRS, Dexter might seize the day and revisit the land lease that now needs their attention.

“The logic of ever-shrinking workforce, ever-expanding, ever-increasing harvesting [suggests that] the government should tear up that old lease, and develop one that's modern and based on current conditions,” including the public's expectations that Crown Land should be managed to the highest level, says Miller's co-worker, EAC Wilderness Coordinator Ray Plourde. “We should not have to compensate any new owner that's going to scoop up that mill for pennies on the dollar in a bankruptcy fire sale.”

Fire sale aside, the provincial government has committed to earmarking 12 per cent of Nova Scotia land, by 2015, as protected areas, under the provincial Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity Act of 2007. This puts the government in a difficult position: if the lease is not revised, the push to protect 12 per cent of the land could end up in direct conflict with Stern's stake, meaning the government would need to compensate the company for the property it would lose. Miller and Plourde agree that protected areas need to be exempted from the land lease before the deal with Stern is finalized.

As well, with the current state of Nova Scotia's “big three” pulp mills, one being in receivership (Newpage), one being responsible for one of Canada's worst environmental disasters (Northern Pulp and Boat Harbour), and one having just seen workers forced to give up many concessions, while CEOs walked away with 8 million in payoffs and the company given tens of millions in taxpayer bailout money (Bowater), it may well be time to give the smaller players in the forestry business a chance at bidding for Crown Land, according to Miller.

“There's already some existing manufacturing infrastructure in Eastern Nova Scotia. There's a series of value-added hardwood mills,” he says. “They've traditionally been shut out of any allocation of wood from Crown Land. This is a perfect opportunity for them to have access to that wood.”

“Smaller lease arrangements could be made for those local industry players that already exist,” says Plourde. “Hardwood mills that are making things like fine flooring, door and wall moldings, wainscoting, trim, and so on and so forth. They employ more people per unit of wood harvested, and they make a value-added product, so it's economically much better for the province. It would also allow for new enterprises to emerge, because they'd have some wood to access.”

Dexter actions have made it clear that the "big three" won't fail. The future of forestry in Nova Scotia suggests that now is the time to set the conditions for "small successes" that don't involve either extreme environmental degradation or a steady, continuous, flow of taxpayer bailouts.

Miles Howe is an editor with the Media Co-op and a member of the Halifax Media Co-op. This article was originally published by the HMC.

NS Jack Pine

Residential School Survivors Share Their Stories

Tim McSorley — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 11:19:18 +0000

Truth and Reconciliation Commission hears testimonials at Eskasoni

ESKASONI, NOVA SCOTIA—Truth can be an ugly thing.

It was to hear some ugly truths that people gathered in Eskasoni on Friday, October 14 for a session of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. The commission is holding hearings on Indian Residential Schools across Canada. The Canadian government supported more than 130 such schools for over a century, during which they were run by a variety of Christian churches. These schools took children from their parents at a young age for the explicit purpose of destroying First Nations cultures, languages and ways of life.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission invited anyone involved in or affected by the residential schools to make a presentation. Most of the speakers were survivors who attended the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School, which was the only such school in Atlantic Canada. It was in operation from 1923 to 1967.

Benji Lafford, a survivor from Eskasoni, spoke about being taken to the train station by uniformed government officials at the age of six.

“I was an ordinary child,” he said. “I went to school in Eskasoni for a while. I didn’t understand anything about the English language at the time. Mostly we were speaking Mi’kmaq. When my dad was alive, he taught us in Mi’kmaq. We chopped wood, we would get water, we would make sure everything would be okay for the next day so we wouldn’t be hungry or cold for the winter. As a young boy, I didn’t understand why they took me away from my homeland and from parents.”

Lafford and his brothers and sisters were all sent to the residential school. He said that as a child he wondered what he did wrong.

“I know now that we didn’t do anything wrong because we were innocent,” he said. “We stopped at almost every train station. We saw a lot of Native children standing on the side of platform. There were no families, no relatives, no uncles, grandfathers, nobody to say goodbye to them. No hugs. There were a lot of children crying.”

Upon arrival at the school, the children were met by the nuns and priests who ran it. The boys and girls were separated. They had their clothes taken away and their heads shaved.

“They scrubbed us so hard, trying to take the Indian away from us,” he said. “They said, you have no parents to come and help you. You have no grandparents to help you.”

He said he recalls, in later years, little boys crying as they approached the big red school, and as an older boy, he knew there was no way to help them.

“Once we got locked up behind those closed doors, no turning back. No turning back at all. You can’t run away because they always bring you back,” he said.

The children were not allowed to speak the Mi’kmaq language. Any violations of the rules were punished harshly.

“If you said a word wrong, you were going to get hit on the head, boom! Say your prayers right. Kneel down right,” he said. “We’d get hit on the head when we were saying the rosary at night. After an hour, our kneecaps would get sore.”

One rule was that children were not allowed to go to the bathroom after 10:00 pm. Lafford said he became a bed-wetter as a result and was forced to carry his soiled bedclothes on his head through the cafeteria at breakfast every time it happened.

“They strapped us almost every night,” he said. “Bend down and touch your toes. Take your pants off.”

He described it as “just like being in a cell.” Punishments also included being locked in cupboards. He described being slapped for speaking Mi’kmaq. His mother died while he was at the school, and he remembers being yelled at for crying in bed after he found out.

“Life went by, days went by, years went by,” he said. “I hope to my creator that things like that will never happen to anybody else. It was hard to let go of things that you loved. It’s not easy to be a child and to grow up in a different world. It’s not easy to walk with your head up when your head is down.”

Lafford attended the residential school until it closed in 1967. He finished his schooling in Toronto, and considered staying there, but decided to return to Cape Breton.

“I went back to my community, where I belong, where I can speak my language, to be with my family, my uncles, my aunties, my cousins, my friends,” he said. "That’s where I wanted to be.”

His experiences at the residential school continued to affect him. He said he drank and used drugs when he got older, often ending up in jail. He had difficulty with jobs and relationships. He said he thought about suicide at times. But then everything changed.

“I became a dancer,” he said, “a traditional dancer. I love that powwow music. I like the sound of the drum. I like the sound of the people singing. My life changed. I respect myself, I honour myself and I love myself, who I am today.”

Grand Chief Ben Sylliboy from Waycobah also spoke about his experiences at the residential school, which he attended for four years, starting in 1947. He was six years old and attended with his two sisters.

“My mother ended up with TB in ‘47,” he said. “We were put into the residential school. During that time, there was a thing called centralization, where the people from Whycocomagh were forced to go to Eskasoni to live here. There were nine families that remained in Waycobah, one of which was my parents. We had everything. We had our own farm. My father worked. The only problem was, my father couldn’t look after us. So we ended up going to Shubie.”

He recalls being forced to speak English.

“The only language we knew was Mi’kmaq,” he said. “Being put in an environment where you didn’t know the language, it was a difficult thing. I couldn’t even ask to go to the washroom.”

He said the school officials told the children they would never amount to anything.

“They said, the only good Indian is a dead Indian,” he said. “Even the nuns told me that. That hurt everybody.”

He said the boys in the school stuck together, becoming comrades. But the boys were kept strictly separated from the girls.

“The hardest part was, you weren’t allowed to talk to your sisters,” said Sylliboy. "I would have liked to have a little 15 minutes together. But we weren’t even allowed.”

He said when their parents visited, the visit was supervised by a nun, and they were only allowed to speak English. Letters home were also dictated by the nuns, with the children all writing the same thing that was written on the board.

“That’s how we communicated with our parents,” he said. “We couldn’t tell them what was really going on, the beatings we’d take.”

In the winter, children were sent outside regardless of the circumstances.

“I remember one time I had a sore stomach,” he said. “Diarrhea. I knocked on the door and knocked on the door. They wouldn’t open the door for me. So I dirtied myself. Eventually a nun came to the door. She said, what’s wrong? I said, I’ve got a sore stomach. She said, you shouldn’t knock on the door. She banged my hand on the door until you could see the bruises. Here, you can see the scar. That remained with me for 66 years.”

After four years, his mother recovered, and he was able to go home. He contracted tuberculosis and spent four years in hospitals. He credits the elders, including Caroline Gould, with helping him re-learn the Mi’kmaq language and reconnect with Mi’kmaq traditions.

Georgina Doucette of Eskasoni said leaving the residential school was also difficult.

“Coming back into my community,” she said, “I felt as if I didn’t belong. Even my grandmother said of my brother and I when we went to stay with her, she told her friends, you know these children who come out of that school, they’re not right in the head. Those were words from my own grandmother. We no longer spoke the language, we no longer had that connection with family because we separated for so long. We didn’t belong in the White world, and we didn’t belong in our community.”

She said it took her a long time to cope with her experiences, and she turned to liquor at a young age.

“I passed on that legacy to my children,” she said. “When I sobered up 24 years ago, I looked at them. And I kept apologizing. I feel deep down, this is the road I set for my children, with alcoholism. And their children drink and do drugs. I feel very guilty. It’s hard to shake that guilt when you’ve carried it for so long.”

She said she was unable to talk about the residential school for a long time.

“I never talked about the residential school because I had nothing good to say,” she said. “I never told my children stories of what happened to me. It’s hard for me to try and forgive, but I know deep down I have to forgive myself first.”

She said she is still on a journey of healing, which started with a family powwow and a return to traditional ways.

“The revival of our culture was really needed,” she said. “I’m proud of how far we’ve come, and I know we have a long ways to go. The whole community has to get together. That’s the only way we can get through it, talk about it, cry and move on.”

Margaret (Sylliboy) Poulette of Waycobah went to the residential school at the age of four. She remembers some fun times, such as going swimming in a nearby lake, but even those memories have a sad side to them. She spoke of making herself a doll out of a cleaning cloth, and having the toys sent by her parents taken away by the nuns to be given to an orphanage.

She said she can barely remember a time before the residential school because she was so young when she went there. She says she does recall waiting for her dad to come and get her and take her home.

“You know at night when a car comes up and the light goes round the room,” she said. “That night a car came up and the light went round. I thought it would be him.”

Children were assigned English names and numbers at the school.

“My number was 54,” said Poulette. “I’ve seen a lot of abuse in the classroom. They picked on people who had darker skin.”

She recalled a blind girl being strapped for not being able to read, and a boy who stuttered having his mouth held open by a stick all day. Another boy was punished by having to wear a dress and have the other children feel the bones of his head where the nuns said “his horns were coming out.” Another girl spilled milk and was strapped for it until her hands turned blue. Children who tried to run away were punished by having their heads shaved. Children who vomited at meals were forced to eat the vomit.

She said they did celebrate holidays, such as Christmas.

“I remember making streamers for decorating,” she said, “but Santa never found us there.”

Commissioner Wilton Littlechild said a lot of the stories resonated with his own experiences as a boy attending a residential school on the Prairies. The commission is visiting First Nations communities across the country collecting such accounts.

Prime minister Stephen Harper apologized to residential school survivors on behalf of the Canadian government in 2008.

“I didn’t accept his apology, to be honest with you,” said Benji Lafford, “because it didn’t come from the heart. Someone just wrote that on a paper and said, read that to the survivors of the Indian Residential Schools to ease their pain. A lot of survivors never got to ease their pain.”

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission came out with a court settlement with residential school survivors in 2006.

Commissioner Marie Wilson said the commission aims to share these stories with all Canadians.

“We think it’s non-Native people who don’t know the story, but very often it is also the Aboriginal children and grandchildren who have never been told these stories,” she said. “They don’t have a context for why things have been the way they have been. I think it’s an extremely important transference of knowledge to share that.”

This article was originally published by the Inverness Oran. Read also Joyce MacDonald's column on the subject of truth and reconciliaion.

Chief Sylliboy

Margaret Poulette

Mining the Island: An International Perspective

Moira Peters — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 10:00:21 +0000

Struggles in Guatemala harken back to Cape Breton's mining boom

SYDNEY, NOVA SCOTIA-Cape Breton Island has been the site of labour struggles since the early 19th century, when mining and steel production dominated the market, the workforce and the island in general.

Struggles for the basic rights for workers – rights many take for granted in Canada today, such as eight-hour days and weekends – were met with a heavy hand from mining companies.

In Cape Breton, the mines tunneled down not far from people’s houses. The Dominion Coal Company and the Dominion Iron and Steel Company (DISCO) owned the houses the miners lived in, the stores they bought their food in, and the pharmacies where they purchased their medicine. Travelling through Whitney Pier and many areas of Glace Bay you will still see company houses, some inhabited and some condemned, that were built by DCC and DISCO for their workers.

Living conditions were bad and deteriorating in the company houses, with overcrowding and no sewer or water systems. Low wages and seven-day work weeks prevented workers from making any efforts to improve their situations. DCC and DISCO sent spies into the mines and the steel mill to ensure that workers were not organizing in the only place they could; if it was found that people were making efforts to unionize, these workers would be fired and blacklisted.

The “Cape Breton Radicals” fought for worker rights and the right to bargain collectively, and eventually, despite the conditions they were working under, they helped bring us to the point of having eight-hour work days, weekends off and safer workplaces.

Every year on April 11, Cape Bretoners who live in what were once mining communities celebrate this struggle by closing town halls and taking a half-day off of school in remembrance of William Davis, a miner who died in a conflict that was caused by an unbreakable strike.

Workers were cut off from the stores, their power and water was cut, and the company’s oppression was severe.

On Davis Day, company police forces clashed with workers for the sixth time, firing indiscriminately and killing Davis, father of nine. The ability to “stand the gaff,” which the company was sure the workers could not do, is the reason we have the workers rights that we have in Nova Scotia today, and the reason Cape Bretoners still honour Davis Day.

Taking our memory south

As a Cape Bretoner, I took the memory of these struggles with me on a recent visit to Guatemala, to see the Marlin open-pit gold mine, operated by Goldcorp Inc. The visit was organized by solidarity organization Breaking the Silence, who run delegations to Guatemala on a regular basis.

In Guatemala, the narrative woven through many of our conversations with people was reminiscent of the experience of miners on Cape Breton Island. The Guatemalans who live in the area of the Canadian-owned Marlin Mine face less visible, yet momentously strong, oppressive forces.

The Mayan people opposing the Marlin Mine in Guatemala's highlands claim to have been threatened by workers of Montana Exploradora, the Goldcorp-owned subsidiary in the country, in a number of ways.

When the company began purchasing land, residents told us, they had been threatened. Seemingly, they were told that if they didn’t sell, the company would own all the plots around their land and it would become worthless.

Although those in the community of San Miguel Ixtahuacan eventually sold their land, either out of fear or out of hope for development, the prosperity they’d been promised did not come with the opening of the mine.

The company had people believe that with a hugely prosperous mine operating in the Mayan Mam municipality of San Miguel Ixtahuacan, the standard of living for those who had to uproot their lives would begin to rise. But in 2008, a year in which Goldcorp saw profit margins rise up to 42 per cent, residents of communities within San Miguel Ixtahuacan saw few benefits.

In May 2008, we sat with community members in a colourful church in Agel, a village in the municipality of San Miguel Ixtahuacan. The testimony of the people painted a picture of Montana Exploradora as the intimidator, forcing people from their lands. People in this community have no choice but to endure life next to a dusty dirt road, with the constant roar of huge company trucks hurtling by.

We went to a number of houses that were cracked, where residents said that they had not seen any cracks previous to the Marlin development. It is believed the cracks are caused by vibrations from passing trucks and explosions at the mine site. As we went from house to house, we had to avoid the bucket of a large backhoe which was widening the road. These were only the most apparent disruptions that the company was causing.

Once we’d travelled into even closer proximity to the mine, to a community called San Juan, we saw more obvious effects.

“People near the mine report suffering from strange skin conditions. In other areas affected by this type of gold mine, these conditions have been the first sign of contamination by heavy metals,” wrote Rick Grylls from the Sudbury Canadian Auto Workers, after a union member visited the same area.

Despite these connections, the CEO of Goldcorp, Kevin MacArthur, maintains a positive attitude. Responding to the record profits Goldcorp has seen, he notes how pleased he is with the success Marlin Mine has enjoyed in “containing costs.”

With less costs abroad, stockholders here in Canada enjoy rising investments, but these benefits come at a major cost to those who reside around the Marlin mine.

In addition, there have been a handful of killings of known opponents of the mine over the last five years.

In Cape Breton, Davis Day celebrates the struggle for human rights by mourning one miner; how many will be mourned in San Miguel Ixtahuacan before these communities are permitted to determine their future without interference from corporate interests?

Rebecca MacDonald is a recent graduate of Cape Breton University. She is a freelance writer and works at Sydney Airport.

Tailings pond at the Marlin Mine

Coal Dust

Moira Peters — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 09:43:53 +0000

CoalDust.jpg

Golden Opportunity for Abandoned Farms

Moira Peters — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:49:04 +0000

Organic beekeepers co-op fighting to keep Cape Breton free of varroa mite

Organic beekeepers on Cape Breton Island are responding quickly in an effort to ensure the island remains free from the spread of the varroa mite, a suspect in the epidemic called Colony Collapse Disorder. Last winter, Colony Collapse Disorder affected between 50 and 90 per cent of commercial bee colonies in the United States. In Canada, 30 per cent of commercial colonies were killed off.

With bees responsible for as much as 30 per cent of our food needs, the consequences of the varroa mite and the colony collapses constitute a looming disaster, and a Cape Breton beekeeping organization is making an effort to keep the island free of those destructive forces.

The Cape Breton Organic Beekeepers Co-op (CBOBC) is currently taking steps to keep Cape Breton varroa mite-free, and potentially will soon be the only mite-free area in Canada or North America, explained CBOBC president, Dennis Laffan of North River Bridge.

Laffan credits another beekeeper, Cyril Welsh, with fostering the idea following two reported incidents of varroa mite on the island. “That was a clarion call to action. We had to do something right away because Cape Breton is one place in the world that has not been affected.”

Beekeepers in Cape Breton have been receiving their hive stock from two experienced beekeepers on the island. “Pretty much everyone got started by them and they always had clean stock,” said Laffan.

The situation began when the senior beekeepers retired and two blueberry growers used imported bees from mainland Nova Scotia to pollinate the blueberry fields, resulting in two reported incidents of varroa mite last year. The beekeepers’ response was immediate, Laffan said. One keeper burned his hives. The other destroyed affected bees and has been monitoring the rest.

“We knew we had to get organized to keep free of the varroa mite or it would destroy beekeeping,” Laffan said, pointing out just how destructive the mite can be on the industry. In Western Canada, he said, beekeepers raising conventional honey receive 60 cents a pound for their honey. In Cape Breton, organic beekeepers receive $4.50 a pound.

The are just 20 members in the Cape Breton Organic Beekeepers Co-op, but Laffan and fellow co-op member Jean Timmons of Coady Road in Margaree Forks believe that the industry can be increased to a hundred or more keepers, especially if the island can be kept free of the varroa mite. None of the Co-op members import queens or packages of bees from off Cape Breton Island.

“Cape Breton is really on the edge of the bee world,” Laffan explained. “This is the northern frontier economically. It’s really the last place where beekeeping has a financial reward. Various beekeepers have made a good living here but those people are retiring.

“Our objective is to have every beekeeper on the island associated with us for the simple reason that if we have one renegade beekeeper bringing in bees from outside, it threatens us all.”

One of the strengths of Cape Breton as an ideal location for organic beekeeping, explained Timmons, is found in the unfortunate failure of so many farms in Cape Breton. “Because farming has been in decline, a lot of the fields have had no pesticides. Along the Margaree River, very little pesticides have been used. It is an ideal world for beekeeping.”

The local beekeepers say that in other areas, besides raising bees for honey, people rent their hives out for pollination, which helps spread Colony Collapse Disorder. It is a hive disaster that has been slowly making its way towards Canada. The disorder puts stress on the bees, causing losses in the millions in the United States. Coupled with the varroa mite, which is a carrier for many other diseases, the danger to local beekeeping operations exists, unless the response is fast and total.

“It wouldn’t be hard to contain the varroa mite on Cape Breton with a strict protocol,” Laffan said. That protocol would require monitoring very, very closely, hives brought in from the mainland by blueberry growers, a situation that will continue to exist until the Cape Breton organic industry reaches the numbers of hives needed for both honey and pollination success.

Currently, the organic Co-op’s membership has approximately 100 hives. To meet both the need for honey production and pollination, Laffan and Timmons estimate that 1,000 hives will need to be nurtured on the island.

The organic keeping of bees, along with having pesticide-free fields, also requires a major “priming of the organic pump.” While organic beekeepers in Cape Breton are receiving an impressive price for their honey, they only harvest half the honey in each hive, leaving the rest for the bees to feed on throughout the winter. In other commercial practices, all the honey is removed and the bees are fed sugar, which both Laffan and Timmon feel is not an adequate food source.

“We are trying to put together a two- to three-year proposal. We have talked to blueberry growers and to their suppliers of bees (on the mainland), which bring 300-400 hives here for the blooming season—-usually one month,” Timmons explained. “We want to see of we can help the blueberry growers.”

The CBOBC would like to see the bees brought to Cape Breton in enclosed semi-trailers, help co-ordinate where they would be put, and monitor them for the presence of varroa mite. They would also watch for bees that may split themselves off from the hives to form new swarms, and they would watch those swarms closely.

The project would involve having a full-time beekeeper dealing with the varroa mite and controlling the swarms. The Cape Breton growers would also make a commitment to monitor every hive. Meanwhile, the co-op would be creating its own hives and would over time be able to provide local blueberry growers with the hives required.

“At that time, we are fairly confident we could control the varroa mite,” said Laffan. “We need to be involved with the blueberry growers. It’s a growing industry and if we are not involved in it, we are not going to be involved in beekeeping, either.”

If the Cape Breton Organic Beekeepers Co-op -- which is not in itself certified organic, Laffan explained, but whose individual members are -- is successful in its efforts, it foresees a not too distant time when the island, clean of varroa mite and Colony Collapse Disorder, could become the the continent’s safest source of queens and bee packages to beekeepers in other parts of the North America and the world.

This article was originally published in The Inverness Oran, February 27 2008.

Bees at Hive Entrance

Cable: unfulfilled radical potential?

hillarybain — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 15:31:12 +0000

The author at a community TV station in Cape Breton.