ad left the province to seek work elsewhere during hard times, were happy to come home to fill jobs. The first furnace was fired on December 19, 1900. These were the boom times when coal was in high demand by industry and the proximity of iron ore, limestone, coal, and the availability of low cost water transportation made Nova Scotia steel very competitive in the world market (Mellor, 1983).Decline of the Coal IndustryCoal use began its decline in the industrial sector, its biggest consumer, shortly after WWII (Alm, Curham, 1984). Coal accounted for more than half of Canadian energy consumption from 1890 to shortly after WW II. On Cape Breton peak coal production was reached in the mid 1940's but the post war era brought a steady decline. By 1960 only half of the original mines in the province were still operating (Ryan, 1992).There were many reasons for the decline of the coal mining industry in Nova Scotia and chief among them was competition. The coal industry is a business and like all businesses if it becomes uncompetitive for whatever reason it will die.One of the reasons coal became uncompetitive in the industrial fuels market is its bulky nature. Solid coal has never been and will never be as efficient as oil or gas to handle or transport. In 16th century England the price of coal doubled at a point eight kilometers from the pit head due to transport costs (Langton, 1979). Oil initially replaced coal as the fuel of choice for industries, then gas as these fuels were cheaper, did not require expensive rail and/or barge infrastructures, and they stored easily (Alm, Curham 1984). Prior to the 1950's oil and natural gas were too expensive to use outside of the local production area but during that decade the government approved the construction of 4 pipelines to be built to transport Alberta and British Columbia gas and oil to Central Canada and Vancouver (McDougall, 1982). These pipelines drastically cut the cost of trans...
