В Пикту начнут снос бывшей бумажной фабрики Northern Pulp

Northern Pulp's demolition to close a hard chapter in Pictou's history Shaun Westhaver belted out John Prine at Pictou’s Harbourview Market as the pulp mill where his father worked for 25 years loomed across the water. “That’s what fed me,” Westhaver said as he nodded toward the former Northern Pulp operation across the harbour. “When I smelled it, I always thought of dad.” The half-century-old mill at the heart of debate and division in Pictou County is coming down. Last Thursday, Environment and Climate Change Minister Timothy Halman issued an amended order allowing the mill’s current owner, Northern Timber Nova Scotia Corp., to tear it down and clean up the site at Abercrombie Point. “The amended ministerial order is specific to the company’s closure plan activities and includes stringent terms and conditions to ensure that the company’s closure activities mitigate impacts to the environment,” reads a statement from Halman’s office. “As part of the company’s requirement to continue to be in compliance with the Environment Act, the updated ministerial order also requires the company to determine if any upgrades are needed to its surface water management process.” According to Halman’s office, the company has said it intends to start work associated with the demolition “as early as September.” It has filed a demolition application with Pictou County. Halman’s directive gives the company 18 months to complete the work, with all solid waste, including construction and demolition debris, going to a facility approved of by his department. Last fall, Northern Timber’s 172,000 hectares of forest land and its tree nursery were sold to Tidnish Holdings Ltd., owned by Oxford Frozen Foods founder John Bragg, at auction for $235 million as part of Northern Pulp’s creditor protection proceedings. The money from that sale went to the Northern Pulp’s creditors, which included its parent company, the provincial government and the underfunded pension plan of its former employees. Fifteen million dollars was set aside for winding up the plant, demolition and preparing the Abercrombie Point property for sale. The cleanup of the Boat Harbour effluent treatment site, built and owned by the province and used by Northern Pulp, remains stalled. The Pictou Landing First Nation has challenged in court the federal environmental approval granted in 2025, objecting to Build Nova Scotia’s plan to treat and cap toxic sludge at the Boat Harbour site, adjacent to their community. Pictou Landing has been deprived use of the Boat Harbour estuary its community members relied on for food and recreation for over half a century due to pollution from the mill. A hearing for that judicial review is scheduled to take place in December. At Pictou’s waterfront Sunday, work was ongoing on a new wharf as tourists stopped by bars and restaurants. Westhaver said the community has been recovering from the division caused by the debate over the mill, which was forced to close in January 2020 after the province refused to allow it to continue to use the effluent treatment site. “These are polarized times, everybody gets in their group,” said Westhaver. “But now that it’s shut and the worst of the economic catastrophe is hopefully over, it would be lovely to get rid of it.”