Mining Association of Nova Scotia, Halifax, Halifax, NS (2026)

08/29/2026

John Angus MacNeil was a WWI veteran and coal miner. He worked in the Inverness coal mine, which today is the site of the world-famous Cabot Links golf course, an example of how reclaimed mines and quarries can contribute to communities other ways after extraction is done.

MacNeil was born on June 5, 1883, in Inverness, Cape Breton, where he lived all his life other than the years he fought for his country overseas.

The Inverness Historical Society interviewed MacNeil when he was “going on 87” about his years as a coal miner. He recalled that the Inverness mine “was the only place where you could get employment…I worked all my life in and around the mines. I started working in the mine March, 1909. I worked there until a strike came on. The strikers wanted the recognition of the UMW [United Mine Workers]. I was two years idle then. I started working again and I worked until the war broke out. I went to war then. I spent five years in the army. From that time on, I worked in and around the mine until I retired. When I retired at seventy, I guess.”

MacNeil said he did many different jobs, “from opening and closing a door, loading coal, chuting coal and being an official in the mine.”

Asked about safety in the mine, he said. “We were very lucky at the Inverness mines as far as fires were concerned. We were very lucky also about gas. You could expect anything, you could expect falls from the roof.”

Asked about things that caused accidents in the mine, he said, “Oh, there are an awful lot of reasons. The lack of securing or timbering a place to safeguard his own life. Another situation, too, that after firing a shot to rush in before you're sure that the last blast was discharged. I remember an accident in Port Hood where the poor fellow thought that the last discharge went off, he walked in, and the second discharge went off and he was killed.”

He said accidents could happen at surface but “the workman on the surface is not about to get injured as the workman down below because the workman on the surface has God's light with him and he sees everything. Below, they got that little lamp to shine. He doesn't see anything and maybe unintentionally, the fellow underground runs into trouble he could have avoided if he had seen better.”

He said the mine owners were concerned about safety in the mine: “I would say yes, because the government of the province of Nova Scotia enacted an act called the coal mines regulation act. The minister of mines appointed a deputy minister. Well, that fellow was appointed to every district in the province. That fellow would travel the mine once a month and he was there to see if the regulations were carried out. If they weren't, he'd come to the manager of the mine and tell him so. Besides that, the mine company saw to it that the coal mines regulation act was lived up to by the letter of the law.”

MacNeil described an accident at the mine: “In the early days of the mine. At that time the coal miners was carrying loose powder. The powder was kept 100 feet below the surface. This morning they were lining up to get the powder. They had opened lights [open flame] so one fellow would say he wants 50 lbs. of powder and they would open it in the can. It appeared that one of these cans weren't closed all the way. A spark of the light went into the powder and an explosion occurred. There was ten of them burned, two of them badly burned. In fact, one of them died over it, a fellow named Mackenzie. The other fellow that was badly burned was John ‘the Piper.’ The others were more or less singed, but bad enough, you know. We were very lucky at Inverness mines overall. We were more or less clear of gas, and they maintained to keep the ventilation as good as they could. In fact, one side of the Inverness mine there was no gas at all, but on the west side they would find gas there.”

MacNeil said he thought the rent charged for one of the company/miner houses was $1.25 per month. He said they were built by the Inverness Railway and Coal Company, the company that took over the mine in 1899: “The first houses were built on Central Avenue across from the liquor store. There was ten houses built at that time. When more people started coming to work in the mines, there was an enormous demand for houses that started coming to work in the mines; there was an enormous demand for houses that they started to build what they called the Red Rows. When that was built, then started building up at River Street.”

Asked how many men were employed by the mine, he said, “Well, #1, the railroad was connected to the #1 mine. When the #1 mine opened they started the railroad. They built the railroad from the street down to Inverness. At the peak, there were 750 people on the payroll.”

The provincial government took over the mine in its latter years to keep it from shutting down. MacNeil was asked if things improved under the government’s management: “No, the mines didn't improve. I wouldn't say it was the government's fault because the mine was deteriorated so much before the government took it over. The companies that was operating the mine, they were getting the cheapest coal they could, you know. When they got away from that, that cost of a ton of coal got higher. As they got further away from the haulage way, the cost of production was getting higher. The government spent a lot of money to maintain the mine trying to keep the town of Inverness from becoming a ghost town.”

MacNeil explained the reason for a miner strike in 1933: “In 1933, that strike wasn't called off for a wage increase or anything like that. Previous to that it appeared that Inverness was going to be a ghost town, and something would have to be done. A committee went to Halifax to intercede with the government. There was a committee appointed in Halifax to form a board. This board was supposed to operate the mine on a co-operative basis. It wasn't working at all. The people were not happy with the situation. A strike was called. The strike was called to do away with the board. This was a very nasty strike. Brothers and friends who were close weren't close anymore. It was a nasty affair for a long time. In fact, I think the sting is still in the air today. The government eventually stepped in to discontinue the board. There was an election called and Angus L. MacDonald's government was put into power. They took over the day-to-day operation of the mine at a terrific cost. The cost of production was awful. The rest of the people of the province of Nova Scotia were angry because they felt the government was throwing money down the drain. The government continued to operate the mine. Finally, the government realized the operation of the mine was futile and they had to give it up. A fellow by the name of Will MacDonald from Sydney took over the top pillars of mine #1. He did operate it very successfully, getting the pillar work, extracting the pillars out of the top level. He opened out what we call #2, the little mine over there, and #5. Probably when it was all gutted out, he was losing money. He pulled out of Inverness, and he went to Port Hood for a while and opened a mine there. That was about the end of the coal mining in Inverness. That was the cause of the 1933 strike.”

MacNeil was asked if the miners got higher pay under the government’s management: “No. Well, I don't think they did. It stayed around the same because the mine was losing money. The people in the rest of the province wouldn't stand for it.”

Asked if he felt the miners accomplished anything by striking, MacNeil said, “No. It doesn't matter how much you win over the strike. The time that you lose, the money you lose you'd take a hell of a long time to get back where you were before the strike. In my mind, a strike never pays, never accomplished anything.”

Today, Nova Scotia’s mining and quarrying industry employs about 3000 Nova Scotians, mostly in rural areas, and is the highest paying resource industry in the province. Its average total compensation (wages and benefits) is over $100,000 per year.

The industry has reduced its injury rate 90% since 1997 and is committed to continuous improvement in safety. We believe the most important thing to come out of a mine is the miner.

See the story of MacNeil’s service during WWI: https://www.facebook.com/MiningNS/posts/pfbid06NCijCegvprZf7DPSD5QPT2FbZCom4g1kZ12Do1BRYyMfXpE3GEYkiZkDmXacBdkl

See the story of the Inverness coal mine at https://www.facebook.com/MiningNS/posts/pfbid0ziiZe5TKKCDTfZxH9cqEbxGC7Bavo5jkSNzDsgwxMZ2F8YWFM1kfngAZ8X2PJ5Q2l

New US tariffs highlight the need to grow our economy to make NS stronger and pay for government programs like health, education and roads. 75% of Nova Scotians agree the mining industry can play an important role in maintaining our independence (http://tmans.ca/polling)

The Government of Nova Scotia is taking important steps to support the province’s mining and quarrying industry, to help it grow and create more jobs for Nova Scotians. These efforts are getting results - more jobs, opportunity and government revenues to help pay for programs like health and education. Learn more at https://www.facebook.com/MiningNS/posts/pfbid0WSKikMCVE7EGRzE8VZKiykCXWUaPJF8RJzdWxCjEcYXE8Y8nEY1g3mnSmu1SVC47l

08/28/2026

Two very unusual, yet strikingly similar, accidents took place at Nova Scotian gold mines in 1898. Historical accidents like them are partly why Nova Scotia’s mining and quarrying industry is so safety-focussed today. The industry has reduced its injury rate by 90% since the Westray inquiry report was released in 1997.

On the evening of Monday, July 25, 1898, Edward Spencer was working as an assistant to Sylvester Carroll, a drill operator at the Dufferin gold mine in Halifax County.

They were working on the sinking of a new vertical shaft by drilling holes into the rock so explosives, dynamite in this case, could be inserted. They would then trigger controlled explosions that broke the rock and deepened the shaft.

This was, and still is, standard activity in most mines and quarries. Blasts are done to break minerals and aggregate off a rock face and, in the case of a gold mine, the gold-bearing rock (ore) is hauled out of the mine and milled to separate the gold from its host rock.

There were two pairs of men working in the shaft, each pair using an air drill.

About 7:45 p.m., Carroll started a new hole using his 4-foot drill. It had gone in only a few inches when the rock into which he was drilling exploded.

Carroll was relatively lucky. Even though he was the one drilling the hole, he was only “slightly injured,” according to the Nova Scotia Department of Mines’ annual report for that year.

The Halifax Herald’s August 1 edition said Carroll, who was single and from Newfoundland, “received the contents of a rock in the left eye. He suffered some also from concussion of the brain, but will likely recover.”

It was Spencer who took the full force of the blast and died within hours. According to the Herald, “His head was severely mangled, and the body severely lacerated. Deceased survived six hours, though never conscious.”

Spencer was 27 years old and was “formerly a bandsman in the Queens Own regiment, highly respected and intelligent,” according to the newspaper. “Three years ago he purchased his release, and married a Miss Mosher from Harrigan Cove, this county. She is a sister of Geo. H. Mosher, lobster packer. She is prostrated by the shock.”

An investigation found that the same four men had been working Saturday evening, two days before the explosion, and a small bit of unexploded dynamite from one of the Saturday blasts remained in the bottom of a drillhole.

It was well-known that holes left behind from previous blasts could still contain unexploded explosives, which could be triggered if a miner drilled into them. For this reason, rules required that miners avoid drilling into old holes and always start new ones instead. Historical miners sometimes drilled into old holes anyway to save time and effort.

However, Carroll and Spencer followed the rules and did not drill into an old drillhole. Instead, they started a new hole near an old one. That was not unusual, and it was terrible luck that drilling a new hole somehow triggered unexploded dynamite in one of the holes they had drilled on the Saturday. The Department’s annual report suggested it was likely that the drill had strayed into the old hole where the remaining dynamite was located.

The Halifax Herald said an explosion caused by triggering unexploded dynamite was “something which does not occur once in a thousand blasts.”

“The Dufferin mine tragedy has caused a gloom of that district and the surrounding hamlets,” according to the newspaper.

A very similar accident occurred at Molega, Queens County, on Monday, September 12 that year. Robert Devaney and Clarence Boyer were drilling holes and doing blasts in the bottom of a shaft in the Parker-Douglas gold mine. They and two other men had also worked on the Saturday, firing five blasts and clearing out the broken rock.

On Monday morning – Sunday being a day off - they started drilling again and accidentally triggered unexploded dynamite from their Saturday blasts. Devaney and Boyer were both killed.

It could not be determined whether they had drilled into the old hole, or if the concussive force of drilling a new hole near an old one was enough to trigger the unexploded dynamite.

The Department’s annual report commented on how unusual it was for unexploded dynamite to be left in a drillhole: “Some things are always taken for granted, and one of them is that all the dynamite exploded if any does. This is the rule, and exceptions are too rare to be acted upon.”

The next day’s Evening Mail said the explosion “hurled rocks and earth in every direction. One of the men who were killed was terribly mangled, and was blown some distance away. A small building was wrecked by the shock. Details of the affair are meagre as yet.”

The Department’s annual report said, “Mr. Devaney was in charge; he was a careful man, and during a year, which for much of the time there had been more than fifty men at work, no accident had occurred. Mr. Boyer was a good miner, and not at all reckless. They were men of excellent qualities.”

Today, blasting is still an essential part of the mining process at most mines and quarries. Blasts are carefully designed to ensure they are as efficient as possible – so they use as little explosive and generate as little noise and dust as possible, while still freeing enough rock to meet operational needs.

They are also designed to ensure rock falls straight down, within a few metres of the blast, both for safety reasons and because it is more efficient for collecting material afterwards.

New technologies, such as digital blasting, have also made blasting more precise, allowing companies to reduce the amount of explosive they use.

In Nova Scotia, blasting cannot take place within 30 metres of watercourses and roads, and not within 800 metres of neighbouring buildings. This is the largest regulated blasting buffer distance in Canada.

Joe Howe Dimock was the first prospector in Nova Scotia’s Dufferin gold district, but his dreams of striking it rich did not work out. See his story at https://www.facebook.com/MiningNS/posts/pfbid02bwdASKa4h4UWKqAPRy6aExJbujGBhdPxcZD8KodBzj7PGwvpUYCiZ2e4z3i66uNCl

New US tariffs highlight the need to grow our economy to make NS stronger and pay for government programs like health, education and roads. 75% of Nova Scotians agree the mining industry can play an important role in maintaining our independence (http://tmans.ca/polling)

The Government of Nova Scotia is taking important steps to support the province’s mining and quarrying industry, to help it grow and create more jobs for Nova Scotians. These efforts are getting results - more jobs, opportunity and government revenues to help pay for programs like health and education. Learn more at https://www.facebook.com/MiningNS/posts/pfbid0WSKikMCVE7EGRzE8VZKiykCXWUaPJF8RJzdWxCjEcYXE8Y8nEY1g3mnSmu1SVC47l

08/27/2026

Fraggle Rock, a 1980s children’s TV show that was rebooted in 2021, was partly inspired by geology!

The show was about four types of creatures - Fraggles, Doozers, Gorgs and Silly Creatures - who lived in a cave and shared a water source (a lake that was created by a leaking radiator in the home above).

The Fraggles’ cave was inspired by Bermuda's Crystal Caves, according to the show’s creators.

In 1907, two twelve-year-olds found a hole in the ground while searching for a lost cricket ball. The hole revealed the Crystal Caves, some of the many caves in Bermuda’s bedrock that have become significant tourist attractions.

Limestone is the main type of bedrock in Bermuda. It is a relatively soft rock that is easily-eroded by flowing water breaking it down (similar to how streams/rivers carve valleys), or calmer water dissolving the limestone.

As sea levels have risen and fallen through various ice ages, Bermuda’s cave systems have repeatedly transitioned from being completely or mostly filled with water to being mostly filled with air. Sea levels are lower during ice ages because so much water is frozen in glaciers, and sea levels rise as glaciers melt and water returns to the sea.

During periods when they were mostly filled with air, stalactites (which hang from the ceiling) and stalagmites (which point upwards from the ground) have formed in Bermuda’s caves.

When water flows down through the ground and into a cave, it dissolves a mineral called calcite, a major component of limestone, and carries it through cracks in a cave’s ceiling. The dripping water leaves behind traces of calcite, which slowly build up on the ceiling until a stalactite forms, hanging down like an icicle.

Water that drips from a stalactite leaves more calcite in a pile on the cave floor, which builds up and forms a cone-like stalagmite. That’s why stalactites and stalagmites are usually found together.

You will sometimes see pictures of caves that are filled with water but have stalactites and stalagmites in them. Because of how stalactites and stalagmites form – in caves mostly filled with air - we know that such caves were not always filled with water.

The water in the Crystal Caves is a combination of sea and fresh water. The caves are connected to the sea through subterranean passages, and the Caves’ water level rises and falls with the tide.

The first tourist to enter the Crystal Caves was American author Mark Twain in 1908. Twain wrote books such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Most caves in Nova Scotia are in gypsum bedrock, but the process by which they form is basically the same as how Bermuda’s limestone caves formed: water erodes the gypsum, which is also a soft rock. This process also leads to Nova Scotia’s many naturally-occurring sinkholes. Groundwater erodes the rock, leaving an underground cavern. Eventually, the weight of the rock and earth above the cavern causes it to cave in and creates the sinkhole.

In 1959, horses fell into a sinkhole on Martin Murphy’s farm in Northeast Margaree. He turned to the province’s Department of Mines for help to figure out what happened and what to do about it. See the story at https://www.facebook.com/MiningNS/posts/pfbid02uGWqEXXQjb7ta4BYCw2NMKQk4zmuK9mipKDWGyMJY1N8DGT8gGiJyUcNkhCjC9XPl

New US tariffs highlight the need to grow our economy to make NS stronger and pay for government programs like health, education and roads. 75% of Nova Scotians agree the mining industry can play an important role in maintaining our independence (http://tmans.ca/polling)

The Government of Nova Scotia is taking important steps to support the province’s mining and quarrying industry, to help it grow and create more jobs for Nova Scotians. These efforts are getting results - more jobs, opportunity and government revenues to help pay for programs like health and education. Learn more at https://www.facebook.com/MiningNS/posts/pfbid0WSKikMCVE7EGRzE8VZKiykCXWUaPJF8RJzdWxCjEcYXE8Y8nEY1g3mnSmu1SVC47l

08/26/2026

A reporter toured Stellarton’s Allan coal mine in 1931 and the article he wrote after offered interesting details about what working in the mine was like in that era.

Today, the mine is the site of Sobeys’ headquarters, an example of how former mines and quarries go on to serve communities other ways after extraction is done.

The reporter, identified only as “A Staff Representative” in the Halifax Mail, toured the mine in August 1931 for a series of articles the newspaper published about the state of the province’s coal mines during the Great Depression. At that time, coal mining was “An industry on which one-quarter of the people of Nova Scotia are directly or indirectly dependent for their livelihood….”

The reporter wrote, “The entrance to some mines is a slope like a toboggan slide but the Allan goes down straight like an elevator in a sky-scraper of New York. With a great rush of air to our ears, the cage shot down through the darkness to the bottom, 1200 feet below. the shaft actually goes down 1500 feet but 300 is full of water and debris.”

When the cage (elevator) stopped, a miner tested the reporter’s light “thoroughly and well, for the Allan Shaft is gaseous and the strictest precautions must be observed.”

The pump room, from which water was pumped out of the mine to surface, “was ornamented with pictures. A Scotsman evidently held way over the destines of the pumps for the pictures on the wall all appertained to that renowned nation.”

To his surprise, the reporter found a plant hanging from the ceiling. “It’s a money plant,” one of the pumpmen told him. “I didn’t think it would grow down here. It was three inches long when I brought it down two months ago, Now, you see, the vines are hanging two feet down.”

Coal was hauled out of the mine in small rail cars, or tubs, that were sometimes pulled by engines and ropes, and sometimes by horse. There were about 40 miles of track in the mine, which operated from 1904 to 1951.

Duncan Fraser worked with a white horse named King and said, “King’s a great horse. The name’s a favorite one for white horses because King William rode the white horse.”

King was popular with the miners. He came when called but they were careful to hide their lunch pails from him because, according to the reporter, King had “an uncanny but inconvenient habit of getting at them.”

To show off how smart King was, Fraser asked the horse, “How old are you, King?”

The reporter wrote that “King mendaciously pawed six strokes with his hoof on the ground.”

“You’re older than that, King, and you know it,” said Fraser. “Don’t do like the women and try to make yourself out younger than you are by taking years off your age.” According to the article, King then pawed the ground another six times, revealing his age to be 12 years.

Some of the challenges of extracting the Allan’s coal were discussed. For example, the mine’s tunnels “due to side pressure and roof pressure and also the pavement [floor] heaving, ‘narrow up.’ They have to be continually reopened or widened. This work is done on the ‘back shift,’ from eleven to seven by the repair crews.”

In other words, the pressure in the rock surrounding the tunnels pushed the rock in and narrowed the tunnels. As cavities are hollowed out by mining, the surrounding rock sometimes shifts or falls in order to accommodate the added stress created by the removal of the rock. This is a natural and common adjustment of the geology in underground mines.

Today, sophisticated technology is used to monitor for shifts and roofs falls and a variety of tools are used to prevent them, such as roof supports, steel netting that prevents rock from falling, and roof bolts which are huge (often 4-8 feet long) metal rods driven into the rock to hold it together.

The reporter also commented on the fact that the Foord coal seam, Nova Scotia’s largest seam, “is tilted up at the most appalling and irregular angles, ranging all the way from ten to eighty-two degrees. It is a revelation to see some of the places here where the coal is being mined. They are so steep the wonder is that the timber could be put in the places to hold the roofs [mine ceiling]. It requires great skill to retimber the steep balances [tunnels] and sinkings that were damaged in the explosion….”

This last comment was a reference to just the most recent explosions in the Allan Mine, which had taken place two years earlier. The Allan was known for having spontaneous fires and a total of eight explosions in its lifetime.

On Sunday, February 10, 1929, at 9:00 p.m., three men who were working around the bottom of the shaft at the 1200-foot landing came up to surface and reported that there was smoke and dust in the mine.

The mine manager, L. H. McKenzie, was sent for. He inspected the mine and quickly concluded that an explosion had occurred.

Twelve horses were stabled near the shaft at the 1200-foot landing and men were sent to retrieve hem. Six more horses were deeper in the mine, on the 1500-foot level, but it was not considered advisable to risk men’s lives to take them out.

With at least one, and perhaps several, significant fires burning, the decision was made to seal the mine at the surface to prevent oxygen feeding the flames. This was completed at 9:00 a.m. on February 11.

At 3:00 p.m. that day, a second explosion blew the covers off both mine shafts and allowed a large amount of black smoke to escape. The covers were quickly replaced, and 2-3 feet of sand was placed over them to prevent air entering the mine.

Over the next month and a half, air samples were taken through pipes and analysed to monitor what was happening in the sealed mine. On March 27, the mine was reopened, and an airlock was built around the shaft at surface to have greater control over air flow.

Also, draegermen (rescue miners) wearing self-contained breathing apparatus were lowered down into the mine and spent ten days building stoppings (walls made of brick or wood) to help control air flow. This was difficult work due to the equipment they wore and the smoky air. Also, the airway on the north side of the mine had an incline of 80 degrees and a mess of timber, rock and coal had to be hauled out of it to clear the passage.

When this was done, the shafts were opened, and ventilation was restarted to empty the working areas of remaining smoke and gas.

Despite the dangers, the 1929 explosions did not cause any fatalities.

Two years later, clean up work was ongoing. The reporter spoke to Joseph Gass and his son James who were building a stopping to close a tunnel and prevent air circulating into the damaged area. They told him there were 110 emergency stoppings throughout the mine that could be closed off quickly in the event of an emergency.

Further along, Robert Young, who had worked at the Allan for 25 years, was removing destroyed tracks, rail cars, timbers and other debris caused by the 1929 explosions.

Despite its history of dangers, “Miners like to work in the Allan Shaft,” according to one of the miners interviewed, and miners who moved to other mines often returned to the Allan. The reporter noted that, “There are practically no labor troubles here. The best of spirit prevails between the Company and the men.”

Still, the mine’s tragedies could not be forgotten. The reporter visited Stellarton’s miners’ memorial, which is dedicated to men killed in local mines.

He also spoke to Charlotte McInnes, who was likely the last surviving widow of the 44 miners killed in the Foord Pit’s November 12, 1880, explosion. According to family lore, Charlotte, pregnant at the time, had reoccurring nightmares of a headless horseman telling her that her husband died in the mines. Her doctor warned that if she did not reduce her anxiety, she could lose the baby. At her urging, her husband, John, lined up a new job but made one final trip into the mine to collect his tools.

She told the reporter, “I’ve every reason to remember the Foord explosion. People talk of being forewarned. Never was a woman more forewarned nor more foretold than I was. I pleaded and begged with my husband not to go to the pit that day. He felt he should go as usual; but it was to be his last shift. He never returned and I was left with my ten small children.”

Today, Nova Scotia’s mining and quarrying industry believes the most important thing to come out of a mine is the miner, and our modern safety record reflects this. Injury rates in the industry have been reduced 90% since the 1997 Westray public inquiry.

The deadliest coal mine disaster in the Pictou coalfield took place in 1918 at the Allan. Newspaper stories written at the time contained details, many of them heartbreaking, about how the disaster impacted the families of the dead. See the story at https://www.facebook.com/MiningNS/posts/pfbid0HGCZH6k43Sez3LAUArxxM35cyTy6ZzfB61DYoZawKbh6AxitGvUNG9jgwLXcTeJtl

New US tariffs highlight the need to grow our economy to make NS stronger and pay for government programs like health, education and roads. 75% of Nova Scotians agree the mining industry can play an important role in maintaining our independence (http://tmans.ca/polling)

The Government of Nova Scotia is taking important steps to support the province’s mining and quarrying industry, to help it grow and create more jobs for Nova Scotians. These efforts are getting results - more jobs, opportunity and government revenues to help pay for programs like health and education. Learn more at https://www.facebook.com/MiningNS/posts/pfbid0WSKikMCVE7EGRzE8VZKiykCXWUaPJF8RJzdWxCjEcYXE8Y8nEY1g3mnSmu1SVC47l

08/25/2026

People often ask for help identifying rocks in Facebook groups, but a lower-tech version seems to have worked pretty well.

The October 18, 1930, edition of the Halifax Mail contained a letter that someone with the initials “L. A. B.” sent to the newspaper with a rock. The letter asked, “Would you kindly tell me if the enclosed sample is of any value?” And if of value to whom and where would I apply for information?”

The Halifax Mail turned to J. P. Messervey, the Nova Scotia Department of Mines’ deputy inspector, for help and printed his response alongside the original letter: “I find that upon examination it consists of particles of mica, quartz and felspar. These are constituent minerals of granite and the sample if therefore a disintegrated granite and of no commercial value.”

It was presumably not the answer L. A. B. wanted but that’s how it goes with mineral exploration. Economically-viable mineral deposits are rare. Only one in every 10,000 mineral exploration projects ends up being a mine.

That's why it is important to develop mineral deposits when we can, both for the essential materials they provide and the jobs and economic benefits they create.

Nova Scotia’s mining and quarrying industry employs about 3000 Nova Scotians, mostly in rural areas, and its average total compensation (wages and benefits) is over $100,000 per year.

See another story of a rock ID not working out well: https://www.facebook.com/MiningNS/posts/pfbid02aEqUJfFj7ZhDP8CbpPwjXGzWaVrLw1yiLYMntmFdDnpSMAYo4wYKenhEDbHzsRxfl

New US tariffs highlight the need to grow our economy to make NS stronger and pay for government programs like health, education and roads. 75% of Nova Scotians agree the mining industry can play an important role in maintaining our independence (http://tmans.ca/polling)

The Government of Nova Scotia is taking important steps to support the province’s mining and quarrying industry, to help it grow and create more jobs for Nova Scotians. These efforts are getting results - more jobs, opportunity and government revenues to help pay for programs like health and education. Learn more at https://www.facebook.com/MiningNS/posts/pfbid0WSKikMCVE7EGRzE8VZKiykCXWUaPJF8RJzdWxCjEcYXE8Y8nEY1g3mnSmu1SVC47l

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