To: editor digby courier
Cc: dan mills
Sent: Thursday, September 17, 2009 6:02 PM
Subject: NIMBY REPUTATION


I am originally from NewBrunswick, and of late I have been hearing the wonderful restoration to environmental health of the mighty Miramichi where I spent my first twenty five years. The Atlantic salmon, which all but vanished from that river and its tributaries, after generations of unmitigated exploitation at the hands of the sacred cow, economic development, is making a comeback.

My granddad, born in 1889 on that river, often spoke of twenty six sawmills there when he was a boy. They gave way to "the invention of the wheel" and all that followed it, from what became frowned upon as the uncomely bucksaw to the powersaw and on to a machine which can clearcut in twenty-four hours what would have taken him years to cut as a youth, and in that time the forest would retore itself.

Large powerful mills were erected to handle the huge amounts of timber that could be torn from its roots.And with it came the invisible effluents pouring forth into the dumping place, the beautiful River, and silently and slowly killing the life the waters carried. Concomitantly, the giant stacks- to chimneys what wind turbines are to wind mills,- carried off into the air that which would pollute the air we breathed, and when the wind was blowing just right, you had to close your windows to prevent the noxious fumes coming through our walls from miles away.

Money was a-plenty, so they said. That was new! But so was cancer which through the years continues to take lives of people in their prime, like an ongoing plague inspired or concocted by greed. The River that drew thousands to its waters, and the tourism dollars that brought,all but died a painful death by choking.

The forest too is all but dead at the hands of machines which rape and render sterile the land as they cut the trees. So the mills now are all gone, and so the multi-dollars. The cancered victims lie in cemeteries along the river banks.

In two or three short years, the mighty river once again witnesses the grilse and salmon in their graceful dance at sunset, as they reclaim their waterway as the Creator had deigned it to be.The rebirth of nature despite humanity's poor care for it! Will we learn at all?

Ms.Herron seems to have missed that side of what the economic drive in the Picture Province may easily forget. But I'll say to her that the great tragedy there as elsewhere is that there were not NIMBY's around then that I recall.We fell numb to consumerism and greed.

Although I accept that Mr.Donham floating on a log in the Sydney tarponds,( for that I believe is where he went to work after he and Harry went their separate ways,) may choose to wax disparagingly as he will to up his charm for those like him, would label people he has never met. However he may dare! That one from our midst who knows the people here so well would consider jumping on his log with him and appear to lower her nose with him at them, and look down it so seemingly with righeous indignation, because they love their home, their families, and neighbors and simply want that truth be pursed - well, to an outsider reading it and looking for a home may well turn his nose and hear the call:"Go west, young man, go west!"

Thank-you for fair and equal space.

Daniel Mills
902-245-5171