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Gowrie Mine
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Port Hood 1911 Flood
Lamp Cabin Memorial Park
Drummond 1873 Disaster
1872 Accidents
Springhill’s Novaco Mine
1860's Accident
New Glasgow's Linacy Mine
1913 Drummond Fires
1908 Princess Fire
Albion Mines 1913 Fire
DOSCO Miner
Cape Breton's TNT
The McCormick and Turner families
Payday Drunk
John Croak’s Victoria Cross
Atlantic Slag Company
Sydney Cement Company
1914 Coal Mine Cost
Dominion No 2
Canary in a Coal Mine
Draegermen
James Dinn
Pit Ponies
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1877 Accidents
Allan Shaft 1912
William Fleming
The Story of Peat
T. G. MacKenzie
Trenton Steel
1930 Stats
MacGregor Mine Explosion
MacGregor Flood
Torbanite Products Limited
Abraham Gesner and Kerosene
1860 Prince of Wales Visit
Dominion No 5
The Royal William and Stellarton Coal
Tom Pit
Terminal City
1875 Accidents
Cannons in Coal Mines
Princess Mine Explosion
Dominion No. 26
A Tale of Two Mines
Franklin Colliery
Robert J. Grant
Springhill No. 1
Mother Coo
Submarine Mines
Barrachois Mine
Fundy Coal Seam
Dominion #14
Dominion #12
Dominion No 4
Child Labour
Joggins Colliery
Safety
Bootleggers
Richmond County
Mabou Mines
Stellar Coal
English Slope
Maccan/Jubilee
The Foster Pit Fire and the Poop Solution
Thomas Edison and the Chignecto coal mine
Henry Whitney and the Dominion Coal Company
Foord Pit
Hiawatha Coal Mine
Coalburn
Springhill Disasters
St. Rose-Chimney Coalfield
Stellarton, Dorrington Softball Complex
How Does Coal Form?
Drummond Coal Mine
Sydney Coalfield and the Princess Mine
Port Morien, 1720
Port Hood
General Mining Association
Thorburn
WWII and Nova Scotia Coal
Nova Scotia's First Railway
Samuel Cunard
Stellarton’s Mining Connections
Sydney Mines
Point Aconi
Victoria Mines
Sullivan Creek
New Campbellton
Inverness and Cabot Links
The Ghost Town of Broughton
Tobin Road, Sydney Mines
Flint Island Coal Mine?!
What does Colliery mean?
Cottam Settlement
Allan Mine
New Glasgow, Haliburton Pit
We love examples of former mines and quarries that operated in what are now the middle of towns! Here’s one from New Glasgow:
The Haliburton Pit was opened in 1866 by Robert Grant Haliburton, son of Thomas Chandler Haliburton, author of the famous Sam Slick books.
The Haliburton Pit, which had a 54-metre-deep shaft that was timbered with oak, was operated by the Montreal and Pictou Company. The coal was good quality but it gave off significant amounts of methane, a safety hazard in underground coal mines and a common problem in the Pictou coalfield. Also, the coal seam was on a steep angle, meaning that following it down would have meant going significantly deeper underground, which increases costs.
The mine operated for about a year and was then closed and allowed to flood.
The mine was located at the corner of New Glasgow’s Ellis and Balfour streets, on the western side of the intersection. Today, the former mine site is a residential neighbourhood.
Exploration drilling for coal and natural gas took place in the area several times during the 1900s. The area explored included the Haliburton Pit (where the houses are now in the upper right corner of the aerial picture below), throughout the large greenspace to the west and the shopping district around Highland Square Mall.
Exploration was done by the Acadia Coal Company from 1916-21, the Department of Mines and Energy from the late 1970s to the mid 1980s, Algas Resources in 1980, Suncor in 1985 and REI Nova Scotia in 1996. About two dozen exploration drillholes were drilled.
Robert Haliburton (1831-1901) was born in Windsor, Nova Scotia. He was a lawyer and an advocate for developing Nova Scotia’s natural resources.
After the General Mining Association’s monopoly on most Nova Scotia minerals came to an end in 1857, Haliburton was one of the investors who got involved in mining in the Pictou coalfield. He was also a spokesman for the Nova Scotia Coal-Owners’ Association.
Haliburton had a keen interest in science and was a founder and vice-president of the Nova Scotian Institute of Natural Science, organized in 1862 for the reading and publication of scholarly articles on the natural resources of the province. He was a fellow of learned societies in Europe and America and attended meetings on both continents.