Early Operation, Planning For Retraction
DEVCO had several operating divisions, including its Coal Division, as well as economic development divisions, intended to help the Industrial Cape Breton area diversify its economy from an over-reliance on the coal and steel industries.
Initially, DEVCO focused on operating the coal mines throughout the Sydney Coal Field that it had inherited from DOSCO, while attempting to invest in other initiatives such as establishing a post-secondary education institution in the area (what would become the University College of Cape Breton, now Cape Breton University), tourism developments, industrial parks for non-coal/steel related manufacturing industries, and investing in small area businesses and community infrastructure projects to help unemployed coal miners and steel workers who had been laid off during the 1960s drawdown in production.
One of DEVCO's first tourism-related developments in the early 1970s was the Cape Breton Steam Railway, a joint project with the Sydney and Louisburg Railway Historical Society, which saw unused Devco Railway tracks between Glace Bay and Port Morien used for operating a tourist railway, with coal-powered steam locomotives. The project ran until it proved to be uneconomic to operate by the late 1970s.
Overall, until 1973, DEVCO was more-or-less focused on continuing the operation of its former-DOSCO mines and railway, while providing new economic growth for the region.
Read more about this topic: Cape Breton Development Corporation
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