Town promotes its coal history

This town was founded on King Coal, and their fortunes have risen and fallen together.

Considered Canada’s largest town four decades ago, with a huge population of miners, Glace Bay now has fewer than 20,000 people, the smallest number since the 1920s.

At one time, 23 mines were in operation in the area. Today, there are two pit mines and a few surface ones in all of Cape Breton Island, reports Canadian Press.

Like five other municipalities in the region, Glace Bay receives provincial emergency aid. It’s a sad fate for an industrial area that could boast for two centuries that it was Canada’s main source of coal.

Yet advocates hope coal — at least its story — will return some prosperity. They want a piece of Cape Breton’s $171-million tourism pie. About 600,000 people visit sites like the Cabot Trail and the Fortress of Louisbourg each year. Usually they take the Sydney-Louisbourg Highway and bypass communities like Glace Bay and New Waterford.

Just 5% of tourists visit the industrial area, estimates Curtis MacLean, director of Glace Bay Area Community Futures, a federal revival project. The futures project has dubbed the coastal highway between Sydney and Glace Bay “the Colliery Route” and printed glossy pamphlets promoting it. The Colliery Route and the provincially designated Marconi Trail, which runs from Glace Bay to Louisbourg, include: remnants of North America’s first coal mine, circa 1720 (Port Morien); the Cape Breton Miners’ Museum (Glace Bay); the site of Marconi’s first transatlantic radio message (Glace Bay); and one of the island’s last two working pit mines (Phalen, near New Waterford). The miners’ museum, which gets about 20,000 visitors a year, is adding a simulated mine ride. It also offers walking tours into a “mine shaft” led by a retired miner and, in the summer, features Tuesday night concerts by the Men of the Deeps.

While the renowned miners’ chorus is a great marketing tool, curator Tom Miller says it’s still a challenge to attract tourists.

Mining activity fell during the world wars, and by 1971 the number of mines had plunged to two.