X-Nico

Cape Breton Development Corporation

It also built the tunnels and some surface support infrastructure for a new mine at Donkin in the early 1980s, however, this mine never went into production and the surface and sub-surface assets were mothballed.

•

The October 1973 Yom Kippur War and the ensuing 1973 oil crisis led the federal government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to re-examine all Canadian energy production, including the nationalization of Alberta oil, as well as an expansion of DEVCO coal production, reversing the recommendation of the 1966 Donald Commission to phase out coal production and diversify the economy of Industrial Cape Breton.

•

One of DEVCO's first tourism-related developments in the early 1970s was the Cape Breton Steam Railway, a joint project with the Sydney and Louisburg Railway Historical Society, which saw unused Devco Railway tracks between Glace Bay and Port Morien used for operating a tourist railway, with coal-powered steam locomotives.

•

DEVCO also shut down a coal wash plant at Sydney Mines and built a large coal preparation/mixing and wash plant at Victoria Junction in its place.

•

New mines were built and opened near New Waterford (Phalen and Lingan collieries) and at the northeastern tip of Boularderie Island (Prince colliery) between 1972-1975.

see also