Coal

by Delores Broten

Most of the coal mines on Vancouver Island closed long ago. A few working remnants of that robust past linger on, such as Quinsam Coal in Strathcona Park, but Vancouver Island's coal industry had said farewell to its glory days. Now the ghost of that dangerous and grimy past, when the Royal Navy fuelled up in Nanaimo, and Ginger Goodwin lost his life in a union organizing drive, is surfacing. The implications of coal bed methane gas extraction for an island just beginning a new life in the post-resource extraction era are startling.

Potential savings of millions a year spur application to burn.

by Delores Broten

The four Norske Skog pulp mills in British Columbia are lining up to burn coal to help them deal with wet hog fuel and sludge, after the release in August of a report on the "test" of coal at Elk Falls Mill. The report chronicles a veritable miracle of clean air results -- reduced dioxins, almost no impact on greenhouse gases, and less mercury than when burning natural gas. Predictably, the mill is also making much of the fact that the coal comes from Quinsam Mine, thus "keeping the money in Campbell River."

by Delores Broten

by Rob Wiltzen

The residents and communities of the Sea-to-Sky region are celebrating a recent decision by the BC government following months of vocal opposition to a plan that promised to introduce a raft of new emissions to their airshed.  

The use of coal in the Port Mellon pulp mill of Howe Sound was firmly blocked by the BC Ministry of

by Arthur Caldicott

British Columbia’s production of natural gas and coal is the business of moving hydrocarbons out of the

A new coal mine is proposed for Vancouver Island while questions multiply.

by Arthur Caldicott 

Ten years ago Beanstalk Capital Corp. was a new company with noth­ing more than a listing on the TSE Ventures Exchange.

by Sarah Katharine Cox

Fifty kilometres south of Fernie British Columbia, in the Flathead River Valley, is a mountain ridge that has no name. A fall photograph shows a sprinkling of snow on wavy peaks, slopes covered in Alpine Fir and yel­low Larch, and a lush valley bottom below.