Industrial Cape Breton is a geographic region in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. It refers to the eastern portion of Cape Breton County fronting the Atlantic Ocean on the southeastern part of Cape Breton Island.
Geography
The area comprising Industrial Cape Breton includes the following communities within the Cape Breton Regional Municipality and earned its name from the various industrial activities relating to steelmaking, heavy water production, coal mining, and spin-off industries.
Northside
Referring to the north side of Sydney Harbour.
northeastern tip of Boularderie Island at Point Aconi
Bras d'Or
Florence
Sydney Mines
North Sydney
Southside
Sydney
New Victoria
South Bar
New Waterford
Lingan
Dominion
Glace Bay
Reserve Mines
Donkin
Port Morien
Broughton
History
Early mining
The southeastern part of Cape Breton Island is home to the Sydney Coal Field, an extensive underground coal seam extending at an angle from the shore beneath the seafloor of the Cabot Strait. This large deposit of high-sulphur coal was first extracted by French soldiers from Fortress of Louisbourg in 1720 at nearby Port Morien. A major coal industry developed during the 19th century, becoming the largest energy project in British North America at its height of production. The largest integrated steel mill in the British Commonwealth was constructed on Sydney Harbor in 1901.
The coal and steel industries went into decline following World War II and never fully recovered. They were nationalized by the federal and provincial governments during the late 1960s with the intention of closing them by the 1980s, however production increased in the 1970s as a result of rising world oil and steel prices. By the 1990s, environmental degradation (see Sydney Tar Ponds) and economic ruin was facing the industrial Cape Breton region. The steel mill and last coal mine were closed in 2001 and the area has been struggling to adapt.
While the urban area of eastern Cape Breton County influenced by the coal and steel industries came to be referred to as "Industrial Cape Breton", many rural communities in the rest of Cape Breton Island have been relatively stable economically, largely due to the mix of fishing, forestry, small-scale agriculture, and a growing tourism industry as a result of the spectacular scenery found throughout the island.
General Mining Association
In 1826 all mining rights in Nova Scotia were transferred from the Duke of York to a monopoly named the General Mining Association. The GMA developed some mines in the Eastern Cape Breton but mostly concentrated on the mainland part of Nova Scotia. In 1858, the GMA's monopoly was broken and many American-financed mining companies were developed in the area, particularly in Glace Bay, New Waterford, Sydney Mines and surrounding areas.
SCOTIA and DOMCO
In the 1890s, two large conglomerates were formed; the Dominion Coal Company (DOMCO) merged all the mines on the south side of Sydney Harbour and built the Sydney & Louisburg Railway with its headquarters in Glace Bay, to transport coal from the mines to the ports at Sydney and Louisbourg. At its high point, the Dominion Coal Company operated eleven mines in the town of Glace Bay which were responsible for forty percent of Canada's coal production. The GMA was transformed into Nova Scotia Steel and Coal Company (SCOTIA) and developed mines on the north side of Sydney Harbour. In 1899, DOMCO financed the construction of a large integrated steel mill in Sydney's Whitney Pier neighbourhood, which was named Dominion Iron and Steel Company (DISCO); the DISCO mill smelted iron ore mined in Bell Island, Newfoundland. SCOTIA also built a steel mill in Sydney Mines. The booming economy in the Industrial area experienced immigration from Newfoundland and Eastern Europe to fuel the labour demand.
BESCO
In 1914 the SCOTIA steel mill was closed and in 1920 both DOMCO/DISCO and SCOTIA were merged into a new company named British Empire Steel and Coal Company (BESCO).
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