Environment

A large black and shiny GMC pickup in a parking lot, with a smaller silver Tucson SUV on its right. Behind the pickup, underneath the large green letters saying "Sobeys" is the entrance to the store.

This article was first published by the Halifax Examiner on October 25, 2024. 

This is the second in a series of three articles looking at the ongoing trend in North America for ever bigger and taller pickups and SUVs, and some of the problems these pose both for human health and safety, and for the health of the planet. In this article we look at what has driven the trend, and what it means for the climate, the environment, and our cities. Part 1 is available here, and part 3 here. 

In March 2022, Lisa Roberts – a former journalist and NDP MLA in Nova Scotia – wrote an opinion piece for the erstwhile Atlantic Canadian Saltwire media network. Her piece was called ‘Trail of tragedy follows pickup trucks.’

In it, Roberts said she winced when she heard about yet another pickup truck striking a cyclist in Halifax, sending the cyclist to hospital with “life-threatening injuries.” That reminded her of two other collisions that “shattered families” the previous year, both involving a pickup truck colliding with a pedestrian or a smaller vehicle.

“Larger, heavier vehicles mean more serious injuries and not for those in the larger, heavier vehicle,” Roberts wrote. “And trucks have gotten larger without being more functional. My grandfather’s pickup truck, which hauled firewood regularly, was easier to get into and had a longer bed.”

“For the sake of our health and safety, we have to talk about trucks,” Roberts urged.

So far, it appears Roberts’ plea for a meaningful conversation about large pickups has gone largely unheeded in this part of Canada.

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A wooden sign with the words "Pictou County Forest School" burned into it around a circle with 3 trees inside it, hangs from a white wooden post over a wooden barrel on the dirt roadside that seems to have had some recent clearing. There is what looks like a buck deer skull with antlers on the barrle and another wooden sign saying "Idle Free Zone Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions."

This article originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner in May 2023. As I’ve noted in recent posts on my website, because multi-billionaire Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta platforms are blocking (censoring) media in Canada, this means articles published by media outlets cannot be posted or shared on any Meta platforms – not Facebook and not Instagram. This bullying by Meta is harmful to independent media, and in my view, harming democracy – instead of fact-checked articles, social media feeds are now full of meaningless memes, unending ads, and lots of opinion based on nothing but, well, opinion. For this reason, I am now posting some of my Halifax Examiner articles on my website, so they will not be blocked and can be read and shared on Meta platforms.

We can hear the children making their way through the woods well before they reach the grove of hemlock trees, this place they call “Base Camp One.” They sound happy, excited, their voices a chorus of youthful exuberance, as they head to school for another day of adventure, learning, and fun in the forest.

Welcome to the Pictou County Forest School.

In what looks like a woods setting sits a weathered grey stump sculpted into what looks like it is meant to be a bear, and the bear is holding a weathered grey wooden sign that says "Welcome to Forest School."

Much of what is created and used at the Pictou County Forest School is of natural materials, like this welcome sign. (Credit: Joan Baxter)

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A screenshot from the GHI website, divided vertically into two squares. On the left, on a black background, in white print, the words "SPIRIT OF SCOTIA" and "Positioning Nova Scotia as a global leader in green hydrogen production." On the right side of the image, a photo with blue sky, blue ocean and three large wind turbines in the ocean, and a white frothy wake from a boat leading to them.

This article was first published by the Halifax Examiner in November 2022, but the underground grab of mineral rights in Nova Scotia by “green hydrogen” entrepreneurs escaped broad public notice at the time. CBC is now picking up on the story of possible hydrogen storage in underground salt caverns in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, so I’m republishing this article about the grab of Nova Scotia’s underground on my website. This way it can also be shared on Meta Platforms, which are blocking media in Canada.

It doesn’t take long to find the thousands of claims that green hydrogen companies have staked on the Nova Scotia Registry of Claims (NovaROC) map, once you realize they’re there.

Since early 2002, at least three companies have been taking out exploration licences covering more than 100,000 hectares (more than 250,000 acres) of Nova Scotia.

Unlike so many of the other exploration licences that cover the province, which are concentrated around historic gold mines and possible deposits of gold and a few other metals, these recent licences are clustered primarily in areas with salt deposits.

“There are no special conditions on these licences,” says Natural Resources and Renewables spokesperson Patricia Jreige in an email. Nor is there a limit to how many licences one company can take out.

Jreige explains that exploration licences are issued for two-year terms, and licence-holders must submit a report of work done and data collected on the claims, and pay a renewal fee that increases the longer the licence is held. The current fee per claim is $10, and an exploration licence can include up to 80 adjacent claims, says Jreige.

Some of the recent licences taken out by green hydrogen operators near Port Hawkesbury are in water supply areas. When that is the case, Jreige says the utility operator is to be notified.

Salt caverns are often used to store hydrocarbons, and Nova Scotians have not forgotten the highly controversial project by Alton Gas Natural Gas Storage project, which planned to flush brine out of salt caverns near Stewiake, and dispose of it into the Shubenacadie River.

There was intense Mi’kmaw opposition, spearheaded by the Grassroots Grandmothers, to the Alton Gas project, and it was cancelled in 2021.

Now, however, underground salt deposits throughout Nova Scotia are being claimed by people eager to get into the production of “green” hydrogen.”

The Nova Scotia government's official Registry of Claims (NovaROC) map from 202 showing mineral and exploration licenses in the province, in green, on a white background.

The Nova Scotia Registry of Claims (NovaROC) map showing mineral exploration and mining licences in November 2022.

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A supermarket display of Big 8 spring water in plastic bottles. One shelf holds 4 litre individual plastic bottles. Underneath that is a shelf full of smaller 100 ml bottles wrapped in plastic in bundles of 24. A price tag propped against one of the bundles reads "So Local" "Big 8 SPring Water 500 ml" and a price of $3.79.

This is the first of a two-part series looking at bottled water from Nova Scotia’s underground, how much the province charges for it, and the real value of fresh water in the midst of a climate crisis. This article looks at the withdrawal of large amounts of groundwater in Colchester County by two large corporations, and at municipal efforts to benefit from those operations. This article was first published by the Halifax Examiner on January 2, 2024. Part 2 is here.

Every year, two corporations withdraw hundreds of millions of litres of groundwater from wells in Colchester County. They bottle the water – said to be “pristine” and “some of the purest water in Canada – and sell it far and wide, even internationally, as “spring water.”

The two corporations are Empire Company that owns Sobeys, which owns Big 8 Beverages, and Primo Water Corporation, which owns Aquaterra that in turn owns Canadian Springs.

It’s impossible to know how much those two corporations make from sales of that water.

I was not able to find out how much water Big 8 and Canadian Springs actually withdraw every year from their wells, which are tucked away on rural roads east of Truro in Colchester County.

Satellite image from Google Maps showing networks of suburban neighbourhood roads in eastern Truro and to the east of Truro, with the Salmon River visible and tracing a course from the upper right of the photo to the lower left corner. While some landmarks such as Tim Hortons and Home Hardware and Foodland locations are marked on Google maps, of note in this screenshot are two yellow circles with stars in them that mark the locations of the Big 8 and Canadian Springs well sites east of Truro.Google maps

Google Maps screenshot from December 2023 showing the locations – with yellow circles – of the well sites for Big 8 (owned by Sobeys that is part of the Empire Company) and Canadian Springs (owned by Aquaterra, that is part of the Primo Water Corp) east of Truro, NS.

Canadian Springs hasn’t responded to any of our questions, despite two emails and one phone call that was shunted to “corporate,” where the line went dead.

A Sobeys spokesperson did reply to some emailed questions, but didn’t answer the question of how much water the company withdraws in Colchester County.

We do know, however, how much Sobeys and Primo Water pay the municipality of Colchester for water that comes from the county, and “one of the purest aquifers in Canada.”

Absolutely nothing. Not one penny.

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crumpled 500 ml plastic water bottle with a blue label identifying it as "Big 8" brand, lying amid stones, fallen leaves, grass and a fir branch

This is the second of a two-part series looking at two commercial groundwater wells in Colchester County – one owned by the Sobeys company Big 8 Beverages, and the other by Canadian Springs, owned by Aquaterra. This article examines some of the environmental implications of such commercial water bottling, when the planet is experiencing not just a climate crisis, but also a plastic pollution crisis. This article was originally published by the Halifax Examiner, and the first article in this series is available here.

In June 2013, the year the Sobeys company, Big 8 Beverages, received a grant of nearly half a million dollars from the Nova Scotia government, it installed equipment in its Stellarton facility that allowed the company to produce its own bottles and to “significantly reduce” its costs.

Two years later, Big 8 won Invest Nova Scotia’s “export achievement award.” To honour the occasion, Invest Nova Scotia put together a promotional video for the company, which features narration from Brad Bethell, Big 8 general manager.

The face of a clean-shaven man with short-cropped brown hair and blue eyes in the foreground, with a large plastic bottle of water with a blue tint and cap behind him, and under his face, a blue circle logo with three curved lines inside it, and the words 'Brad Bethell, General Manager" in a blue banner across the bottom of the screenshot, taken from a video.

Screenshot from Invest Nova Scotia video featuring 2015 Export Achievement Award Winner: Big 8 Beverages, owned by Sobeys, showing its general manager, Brad Bethell.

In the video, Bethell said:

Essentially, we can bottle a 500 ml bottle of water inline from a pre-form all the way through to palletizing it without touching it, so it’s very efficient, very effective, and we actually produce over 250,000 single bottles a day.

You really have to understand your market that you’re operating in now, your domestic market, and make sure you’re one of the best. And then once you know the business model, the cost, the logistics, we work with NSBI [Nova Scotia Business Inc.] to make some great contacts to help educate ourselves, on what we need to do to be competitive, and to get into the export trade.

A man wearing a baseball cap and glasses stands in the middle of a U-shaped assemblyline full of plastic bottles full of orange pop with labels identifying it in navy blue lettering as Big 8.

Still showing the Big 8 bottling plant in Stellarton, taken from the Invest Nova Scotia video promoting 2015 Export Achievement Award Winner: Big 8 Beverages.

Invest Nova Scotia also did a Q and A with Julie Nowe, Big 8’s finance and business development manager. Nowe said the “cost reduction” Big8 was able to make by producing its own bottles, and the bottling plant in Stellarton being close to the port of Halifax, positioned Big 8 for exporting “top-quality Canadian bottled spring water or soft drinks.”

“Now we’re exporting to China, Barbados, and Aruba, and we’re looking at further development in Asia and some Middle Eastern countries,” said Nowe.

“We have a niche here because of our excellent water source. We acquire our water from an underground aquifer in Valley, Nova Scotia, which is one of the purest aquifers in Canada,” Nowe noted.

As reported in Part 1 of this series, the two corporations extracting water in Colchester County for bottling are Empire Company that owns Sobeys, which in turn owns Big 8 Beverages, and Primo Water Corporation that owns Aquaterra, which in turn owns Canadian Springs.

According to Nova Scotia Environment and Climate Change (NSECC), Sobeys has a water withdrawal permit that allows it to withdraw 650,000 litres a day, which works out to 2.4 billion litres a year. For this, it pays the provincial government $360.27 annually. Aquaterra can withdraw 961,000 litres a day, or 3.6 billion litres a year, for which it pays $408.58 annually.

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This book review was originally published in the Halifax Examiner on November 17, 2021.

This photo shows the cover of the book "Testimonio" and it shows Diodora Hernández who was shot near Hudbay’s Marlin gold mine in Guatemala losing sight in one eye and hearing in one ear Photo: James Rodríguez

Book cover featuring Diodora Hernández who was shot near Hudbay’s Marlin gold mine in Guatemala losing sight in one eye and hearing in one ear Photo: James Rodríguez

Alvaro Sandoval is a Guatemalan who knows all too well what it is like to be attacked and criminalized for trying to defend his community from North American gold mining companies, and he has a message for Canadians and Americans:

I would like to call on the people and politicians of Canada and the United States to reflect seriously on your way of life in your so-called developed countries; that your way of life is achieved at the cost of exploiting the natural resources in our countries that you call “underdeveloped.”

Sandoval is from San José del Golfo, a community about an hour’s drive northeast of the capital, Guatemala city.

Like others in his and neighbouring communities, Sandoval began his resistance to gold mining in 2012 when he got wind of plans by Vancouver-based junior mining company Radius Gold to open the Tambor gold mine in the area.

This photo shows Angelina Noj from San Pedro Ayampuc in Guatemala holding her small son Esmit in front of the blocked entrance gate to the Tambor gold mine. Photo: James Rodríguez

Angelina Noj from San Pedro Ayampuc in Guatemala holds her son Esmit in front of the blocked entrance gate to the Tambor gold mine. Photo: James Rodríguez

For more than five years, Sandoval and his family were part of a community movement that maintained a permanent peaceful encampment outside the mine, a camp known as “La Puya” (The Thorn). Riot police were repeatedly dispatched to the site to violently evict the people at the encampment.

Although the Canadian company Radius Gold – that promotes itself with the motto “Relentless Exploration, Great Discoveries” – initiated the mine, it didn’t keep it very long. In 2012, shortly after two hitmen on a motorbike shot at and attempted to assassinate community member, Yolanda Oquelí, Radius sold its interests to its junior American partner, Kappes, Cassiday & Associates (KCA). However, Radius Gold maintained a royalty interest in the mine’s gold production.

After years of community resistance to the mine, in 2016 the Guatemalan Supreme Court finally and definitively revoked the company’s license. The gold mine – which had been illegal all along – was closed down. It had never obtained “free, prior, and informed consent” from Indigenous communities in the area.

This photo shows popular art on a wall saying “Todos somos la puya” (We are all The Thorn”) inspired by the resistance to the Tambor gold mine in Guatemala. Photo: Catherine Nolin

Popular art on a wall saying “Todos somos la puya” (We are all The Thorn”) inspired by the resistance to the Tambor gold mine in Guatemala. Photo: Catherine Nolin

Sandoval and his daughter Ana would like to see people in North America help reign in their mining companies that are wreaking havoc on Indigenous lands and people in Guatemala and beyond:

We call on the Canadian and American people to investigate and learn about how your companies come here and violate our rights; how your companies participate in and take advantage of the corruption of our governments that serve the interests of your companies to then violate our rights and harm the wellbeing of our natural resources, our communities, and our people.

We call on your politicians and business leaders to reflect on how you do your work as politicians and business people; we call on you to do your work in an honourable way and not in a way that profits from the blood and tears of other people. Like you, we merit respect in life.

The Sandovals’ messages are contained in a new book that details in sometimes horrifying detail the behaviour of Canadian-owned mines in Guatemala, a country that suffered 36 years of armed conflict, which only ended in 1996 when a Peace Accord was signed.

The book documents the complicity of the Canadian government in promoting Canadian companies and mining-friendly laws in the country on the heels of decades of genocidal military governments, and the unwitting complicity of the Canadian people whose pensions are invested in those companies.

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