Getting aboard

Amid a slew of spring meetings and conferences, I did some planning for a trip to attend an out-of-province event recently, and realized the schedule would actually make it feasible to take public transit – which is not the first option that occurs to us, living pretty far off the beaten path.

Our road, this time of year, is little more than a beaten path – a muddy track gouged with ruts and pocked with craters, frequently requiring the driver to drop into first gear, while maintaining enough forward momentum to avoid bogging down. Once the surface is graded and dried out, perhaps by Mother’s Day, I will take the snow tires off the car, and determine whether we need some front-end work done to eliminate the vibration that now occurs at highway speeds. (I should also snug up the zip ties that are holding the front bumper on.)

I don’t really mind solo long-distance driving – I enjoy the solitude – but it’s a flagrant waste of time and fuel. Reaching Halifax is not too hard for me; I can get a lift all the way there, or to one of the towns served by the South Shore bus. (This service, launched last year, needs to add an evening run, and the fares need to be reduced – but it’s a start.) Buses, and occasionally even trains, run from Halifax to Truro, Springhill, Amherst, Sackville (N.B.), and Moncton – which was my destination. (From Moncton, there are good connections north to Miramichi and Campbellton, or westward.)

Event planners would do well to consider venues within a few blocks of transit stations – to minimize the overall environmental impact of the gathering, and just to give attendees the option. As a passenger, rather than a driver, I like being able to read, take a nap, or get some work done on the laptop. On the train that took me from Moncton back to Halifax, I was particularly happy to be able to stretch my legs, and grab a coffee in the club car, where there is free Wi-Fi.

Technological retrofits notwithstanding, there is something anachronistic about Via Rail. The antique character of its rolling stock is kind of charming, but it does not bode well for the future. Many of the cars were built in the 1950s, and they can’t keep rolling forever. The 2018 federal budget included a major investment in new cars for the corridor between Quebec City and Windsor, Ontario. We need a similar commitment for the East Coast route. The tracks probably need some work too, judging by the bouncing and swaying motion at higher speeds. (I’m sure freeze-thaw cycles are hard on rail beds, but there are plenty of northern nations that have smooth-as-silk train service.) The line should actually be twinned, to allow better scheduling of freight and passenger services alike.

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On the train I overheard a bizarre conversation – a few, actually. What sticks with me is the young guy who was talking about his plans to spend some time with friends firing assault rifles at a shooting range in Dartmouth. I knew gun tourism was a thing in Las Vegas, but I was not aware that this form of entertainment is available in the Maritimes.

Sure enough, there it is on Windmill Road, right next door to the local poutinerie. You can pay to fire off a few dozen rounds with a number of exotic weapons – such as an AR-15, an M4 carbine, or an R700 sniper rifle – under supervision by a safety officer, no licence required. These packages, ranging in price between $70 and $500, have fun names like Front Line, Special Ops, Call of Duty, and Aftermath.

In a way, it just sounds kind of juvenile, like video gaming. With the minimum age posted at eight for .22-calibre rifles, and 12 for a handgun or AR-15, maybe it’s meant for kids’ birthday parties. On the other hand, it seems profoundly distasteful – disrespectful to those who have died by gunfire in any circumstance, and to those who have carried arms in the name of public service, deriving no pleasure from doing so.

It’s okay that we don’t all agree about this, but we should pay attention to how the culture is evolving, or degenerating. Canada has a great hunting tradition, based on conservation, skill, and restraint. Using guns as playthings or fetish objects is creepy, and it besmirches that tradition. Check out Phil Thompson’s views on the subject, on pg. 27. Keep those cards and letters coming!

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The train comes through the Wentworth Valley (still lots of ice in Folly Lake, at that time), which is quite lovely. Naturally, my thoughts turned to the possibility of boosting GDP by means of gold mining in the Cobequid Hills. Later this year, Nova Scotia plans to invite mineral exploration companies to submit proposals for an area that has been defined (prospectively, I guess) as the Warwick Mountain Project, in Colchester and Cumberland counties. A sales pitch on the Department of Mines and Energy website calls it “a unique opportunity to secure a belt-scale gold play.” (Serious mining jargon there, which I presume has something to do with quantities of ore being moved on conveyor belts – but perhaps a reader will set me straight.)

So the gold diggers will soon be pitching their plans for this property, which comprises a total area of 30,560 hectares. Meanwhile, a citizens’ group called Sustainable Northern Nova Scotia is trying to get more information about what’s on the table, especially in the French River Watershed, which supplies drinking water for Tatamagouche.

It’s not the only gold play currently in play. One of the more active players is Atlantic Gold, which wants to develop three new sites on the Eastern Shore – Cochrane Hill, Beaver Dam, and Fifteen Mile Stream – in conjunction with its existing Touquoy site at Moose River (where Forrest Higgins lost his legal battle to prevent expropriation of his family’s land, back in 2013).

These are not the kind of mines where you chip away at a vein of glistening ore; they are huge open-pit operations. The gold exists in minute concentrations, so vast quantities of material must be quarried out and crushed, necessitating endless trucking of rock (plus increased road transport of cyanide for use in processing at Touquoy). What remains is a hole far deeper than any lake in the province.

It is impossible to imagine how such dramatic alterations of the landscape could occur without causing negative effects on hydrology – even if things go well. Simply exposing all that rock is likely to cause “acid mine drainage” (AMD) into watercourses, reducing pH and mobilizing heavy metals. The St. Mary’s River Association – which has been around since 1979 and is not, by its nature, an activist organization – has led a campaign to stop the project.

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One of the conference presentations I heard this spring was by Garth DeMont, a geologist with the Nova Scotia Department of Energy and Mines. The provincial government is very keen to have more gold mines operating, and has provided various subsidies and incentives to move things along. DeMont has a “community liaison” role, trying to get citizens warmed up to the idea. In his address, he took the somewhat unusual approach of acknowledging that mines bring “significant” environmental risks. He argued that we are morally bound to accept those risks, since we use the stuff that comes out of the ground.

“The market demands that X amount of gold is going to be produced somewhere in the world. If we ask for the gold in our products, whether it’s our phones or our computers, and we don’t accept some of the risk by having some of the mining in our backyards, then we’re putting that risk onto someone else’s shoulders,” he said.

“There’s an ethical question of whether that’s a fair thing to do, because we’re putting that gold mining into areas that have much lower standards of environmental controls. And that bothers me, personally.”

This sounds very egalitarian, and it might bear consideration if we were talking about something that we really needed. But there are thousands of tons of gold socked away in vaults all over the world. It lasts forever, and it is eminently recyclable. For useful applications, there’s already enough above the ground to last for all time. The market is driven entirely by hoarding and speculation.

We should keep this in mind anytime we are scolded about the importance of doing our part to comply with “market demands” – especially in a small jurisdiction like Nova Scotia, which also happens to possess unique and fragile ecological assets – not to mention our commitments to First Nations interests that are recognized around the world. Can our contributions help to displace dirty industrial activity elsewhere? Probably not. And how would we know when we had given enough? DL