Northern Pulp wants author Joan Baxter and her latest book placed squarely on the Christmas naughty list.
Baxter was looking forward to signing copies of The Mill: Fifty Years of Pulp and Protest at Coles in New Glasgow on Saturday afternoon.
But the event was cancelled
after an apparent attempt by the company that runs the Abercrom
bie Point Mill in Pictou County to scuttle the book-signing.
“In my opinion, this book is a non-factual rhetoric-filled account of the mill and its history and, quite frankly, something that is offensive to anyone who has an association to the mill,” company communications director Kathy Cloutier wrote in an email that was dispersed to Northern Pulp employees and forwarded to retired mill workers.
The email, obtained by The Chronicle Herald, went on to address the book-signing set for the Highland Square Mall Coles outlet for this past Saturday from 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. The email included an attached letter that could be signed and forwarded to the New Glasgow bookstore and to Coles/Chapters headquarters in Toronto.
The attached letter read: “This is one person profiting off negativity towards Northern Pulp and its past and present workforce that have raised families, put children through university and continues as a generational employer.”
The attached letter ends with, “should management (local or headquarters) follow through with this book signing promotion, I will NO longer be a patron of Coles in New Glasgow or any other Coles/ Chapters locations.”
The original email to employees and retirees said the attached letter was included “should you wish to be among those who sign and mail out to both addresses noted on the letter.”
In an interview, Cloutier said a number of employees and retirees took offence to the book’s content “demeaning their work and history.”
“They chose of their own volition to send a letter in to Coles,” she said.
Baxter, whose book chronicles a half century of mill operation that has provided jobs while generating division, was told by Coles/ Chapters five days before the scheduled book-signing that they worried for
her safety and for the safety of staff.
“I was very upset, I won’t hide that,” Baxter said of the cancellation. “This is Nova Scotia, Canada, in 2017. I had absolutely zero fears about going there and they said they were worried about my safety. . . . They said the bookstore staff were really uncomfortable with it.”
Baxter said the explanations for the Highland Square Mall cancellation were vague.“Disruptions, protests, ‘somebody might destroy the book.’ I wanted to know what had led to the cancellation. I said if there had been threats serious enough to warrant the cancellation of the book-signing, then I felt they should have been given to the police.”
Kate Gregory, the national Indigo communications director in Toronto, said staff safety is the No. 1 priority.
“A number of events leading up to the signing, including aggressive conversations directed to store staff, have led us to cancel this event,” Gregory said in an email.
Mary Gorman from Merigomish, a longtime opponent of the mill’s emission levels, said she went to the bookstore to get a signed copy Saturday afternoon and couldn’t believe it was cancelled. She and others brought thecancellation to light on Facebook.
“Apparently, the mill sent out a form letter to all of their employees that they wanted them to sign and send in to the bookstore that they wanted this signing cancelled,” Gorman said.
“This issue has gone on far too long. This issue is about a foreignowned pulp mill that for 50 years has never pulled its weight and it’s aided and abetted by governments of all political stripes.”
Baxter, an award-winning author, journalist, researcher and development consultant who lived in Africa for a number of years beforereturning to Nova Scotia and a home near Tatamagouche, said the book that was more than a year in the making is primarily about
government failures.
“I would say that what really comes out of this book is that successive governments of all stripes have failed to meet citizens’expectations that they should protect them from air and water pollution, health risks and forest destruction,” Baxter said. “There have been wave after wave of protest groups, of citizens expending immense amounts of energy and research and writing to government officials to try to get their governments to protect them and they feel that the failure is the government’s. . . . That’s the message that comes out and it’s not my message, it comes from the people I interviewed.”
Baxter said she was told by email that the company management and board, including Cloutier and board chairmain and former premier John Hamm, would not participate in the book project. Current Premier Stephen McNeil also declined an interview with the author, as did the union that represents plant workers.
“I tried. But I did talk to people whose livelihoods had depended on the mill who were willing to speak.”
Baxter said her offer to sign books in a back room at the New Glasgow outlet later that Saturday was accepted by the bookstore manager. Still, she was disheartened and disappointed by the cancellation.
“It is a very, very tight-knit community and I understood that there were sensitivities. I really feel for the bookstore but I thought that they would have done themselves a service if they had pointed the finger at the people who were intimidating them. Then there wouldn’t be the anger that showed up on social media that was directed at the bookstore and the company. It would have been directed at the people who were in some way or another intimidating the staff of that bookstore.”
-Francis Campbell
