UCTE represents the workers who operate and maintain the Canso Canal. Unlike Canada’s other canals, it is operated by the Canadian Coast Guard.
Environment and background
It’s another of our unique worksites. When the causeway was built (previously there was just a ferry) to connect Cape Breton Island to mainland Nova Scotia In 1955, the Canso Canal was built to maintain navigability through the strait, which saves seventy nautical miles compared to going the long way around Cape Breton Island.
Tidal Canal: the sea level on the two sides of the causeway – Chedabucto Bay to Northumberland Strait – differs because of tides. The canal has a lock that raises or lowers ships to traverse that difference. A swing bridge is opened to let ships through the causeway into the canal, which can handle a ship up to 224m (736 feet) long and 23.8m (78 feet) wide, with a maximum draft of 8.5m (28 feet).
On July 26, active and retired UCTE members there and PSAC Atlantic Rep Nancy MacLean participated in a shore clean-up in honour of former Local 80824 President Harry Langley. Langley’s brother John and cousin Gordon joined in, to commemorate his work caring for the community and the environment.
Pictured here is some of the litter — plastics, metal, and even chemical waste — that was cleared from the site.
Eighteen members make up UCTE Local 80824. That includes a welder and electrician for maintenance, four lockmasters, four canal operators, and four members in Environmental Response.
Denise Reynolds is the first female lockmaster on the Canso canal and currently President of the local.
She’s worked there since 2007. In 2012 she became the first female lockmaster on the Canso canal but if you speak with her you’ll hear that she’s a union activist first and foremost – she’s held a number of roles, currently President of Local 80824 and holding several roles in the Atlantic Region.
Refurbishment
Now the canal is 70 years old. This season is shortened by a month to allow time for a multi-million-dollar refurbishment project. There is provision on the collective agreement there to allow workers to accumulate full-time hours (rather than seasonal work) by working 12-hour shifts – two days on, then two nights on. It makes for an intimate team dynamic. This year, the scheduling will be even tighter to get a year’s worth of hours in.
Meanwhile, the 70-year-old tech keeps humming along. Our maintenance members are impressed at how those things were engineered and built to last in the 1950s. The arrestors – a safety mechanism to keep ships from impact with the lock equipment — are running, but they’re down to their last replacement motor – of a kind that isn’t available anymore. It would be a tall order if they have to find one to match before the renovations.
Like our other members working for the Canadian Coast Guard, the canal workers are eager to learn more about the impact of this year’s announcement by the Prime Minister that the agency will move to the portfolio of the Minister of Defense. The Canadian Coast Guard is a civilian organization, and that’s what its workers signed up for.
They’re proud of the service they provide and of the natural beauty of the worksite. In this round of bargaining with Treasury Board, they are determined to protect both.
