After that meeting I read a history of the Masons, learned that several Founding Fathers of the US were Masons, as were many other historical figures. Some of my friends are. It is a positive organization. I just remembered his name. Curtin Winsor, Jr. We talked for quite a while while we sat outside the restaurant in the setting sun waiting for tables. (He won the 2022 Manwaring Award.) He quietly recounted anecdotes about President Reagan and other notables he has known well. Spoke of the positions he held, the trends he observed. Experienced, confident, not boastful.
Re the Manwaring award, in the notes the presenter described how Winsor was early to see consequences and trends, such as the possible follow-up to the first attack on the WTC in NYC, an explosion in the parking garage. A few years after that attempt, I interviewed a senior member of the WTC Assoc. on one of the upper floors, a man close to retirement. This was years before the successful 2001 air attack by a group of fanatical unskilled pilots wielding box cutters, hardly the existential threat to western civilization, as it is still described.
Re wind, I helped found a start-up back when Dr David Wheeler was holding town hall meetings as part of the process to set up a regulatory regime for the sector. Our plan was to set up a pilot project, a small wind turbine at a fish plant on Cape Sable Island. We received funding and were supported by a few senior people in the industry. Squabbling by the founders ended that story.
Wind and solar are the future, and yes Nova Scotia is well positioned. Nuclear energy can also play a role, as Germany showed before Merkel impulsively shut down the sector. Not to mention conservation, as the waste in the energy sector is immense. By historical standards the price of energy is minimal, so why conserve?
Amusingly, the Oak Island show is brilliantly edited with dramatic music, yet at the end of each episode what they have uncovered is precious little. It does, however, put NS on the map, so to speak. The one time I took the tour, once they cleared us out a convoy of expensive black vehicles with NA plates descended. This a was a private tour for senior members of the Freemasons, NA division. Later I met one of them at a restaurant. He gave me his card and I looked him up later. An American, he had an extensive resume working for the federal government (under Reagan), the private sector, and NGOs. "I liked the private sector best," he said. Couldn't make this up.
Before we left Oak Island, a I was lucky to chat with Dan Blankenship, the amateur historian who began the era of modern searches and eventually moved from the US to Nova Scotia years ago. Our meeting was just before he died in in his upper nineties in 2019. Turned out he was a skeptic of most of the theories of who could have done the excavations and he told me just how little real evidence has been found since the initial discovery. One telling historical detail is that the depth of the main shaft precludes most countries from being candidates for doing the engineering work of excavating the shaft. Germany, as I recall, was the country that pioneered the technology, and later some of it was adapted in England. In other words, a lot of the episodes are malarky from the get go. Good marketing though.
Re wind power, while the technology behind renewables, mostly wind and solar, is ramping up fast, it still requires massive subsidies and the North Atlantic is a hostile place, as the oil sector knows. Energy storage is the real trick. Germany sells the electric power to Scandinavia where it is stored in the form of potential energy behind hydro dams, then bought back.
Note: the fossil fuel sector still receives massive government subsidies in many countries where it operates, including Canada, as it were still a fledgling sector just getting started, as it was a century ago when oil was found literally oozing out of the ground. In the US, hyper profitable Exxon doesn't bother to maintain its refineries (let alone build new ones) and pipelines, because, you know, that is a cost.
Before someone else connects the dots for you, I'd like to share with you that I am a Scottish Rite Freemason (32nd degree), and I filmed the pilot footage for Curse of Oak Island, I (and everyone who thinks about it even for a minute) know that the only thing there of value is the story, and I'm a big believer in water storage of energy especially apired with offshore wind.
In the TV business, we call the style of storytelling used in CoOI "What Behind That Rock?" storytelling. It's a very powerful tool.
The way you mock environmental concerns is disguising. Massive wind farms are a hideous blight on the environment and really do great damage to marine life. The 20th century swashbuckling careless oil men are replaced by 21st century equivalents who ravage the planet with “renewables” that are anything but.
Some day fusion reactors will make all of this moot. Until then, fission reactors are a vastly less damaging solution to North American power needs.
Thanks for the note. I don’t mock environmental concerns — I share them. I believe we need to look with clear eyes at all energy options, their tradeoffs, and their consequences.
Offshore wind isn’t perfect. That's a core theme of the essay. Nothing is. But given Nova Scotia’s geography, wind patterns, and shallow shelf, it offers us a once-in-a-generation chance to create sustainable, exportable power — and a new economic foundation that’s not built on digging or burning.
You’re absolutely right that fusion could someday change everything. So could thorium reactors, or something we haven’t yet imagined. But we can't power homes, heat hospitals, or run industry on someday. We have to work with what’s viable now — and build wisely, with accountability and care.
That’s not swashbuckling. That’s planning for a progressive, prosperous, and purposeful future.
willing to swap uranium & fracking for off-shore wind. even FN might be onboard with this, (as long as they are asked FIRST).
Caveats: made in Canada (actually NS, why not, if this is the hot wind location you say it is?).
#2 $ stay here as a priority; #3 juice for Bluenosers is next to FREE; electrification build-out in NS simultaneously with off-sahore wind development.
Thanks for writing this. It's a reminder of the biggest obstacle to a prosperous future for all.
Offshore wind is a path to the future. Not a symbol. Not a gesture. Not a “perspective.” It’s power — literal and figurative — and it’s ours to claim.
We don’t need another committee to weigh the trauma. We need wind on the water, wires to the grid, and work for the next generation. We're exploring a place no one has ever lived and a resource that's only ever been treated as a danger or annoyance.
Let's leave hyphenated Canada behind, with its identity-as-victimhood, with every initiative bending the knee to a thousand tiny vetoes. Progress, purpose, and prosperity can't keep waiting for permission. That's what's holding us back.
So let’s build. In Nova Scotia. With our wind, our people, our hands. Let the money stay here. Let the power flow here. Let the rest of Canada plug in, because we have more than enough to share. The mindset of scarcity, of grievance, of poverty, of 'not enough' has no place in this project.
This isn't about the past. It's not even about the present. It’s about a possible path to the future — and whether we’re charitable and encouraging enough to deserve it.
I have driven along the Eastern Shore — very little economic activity — but everywhere signs telling you to stop fish farming, and stop golf course development. Can’t imagine what the response would be to proposing offshore windmills all along that barren coastline.
After that meeting I read a history of the Masons, learned that several Founding Fathers of the US were Masons, as were many other historical figures. Some of my friends are. It is a positive organization. I just remembered his name. Curtin Winsor, Jr. We talked for quite a while while we sat outside the restaurant in the setting sun waiting for tables. (He won the 2022 Manwaring Award.) He quietly recounted anecdotes about President Reagan and other notables he has known well. Spoke of the positions he held, the trends he observed. Experienced, confident, not boastful.
Re the Manwaring award, in the notes the presenter described how Winsor was early to see consequences and trends, such as the possible follow-up to the first attack on the WTC in NYC, an explosion in the parking garage. A few years after that attempt, I interviewed a senior member of the WTC Assoc. on one of the upper floors, a man close to retirement. This was years before the successful 2001 air attack by a group of fanatical unskilled pilots wielding box cutters, hardly the existential threat to western civilization, as it is still described.
Re wind, I helped found a start-up back when Dr David Wheeler was holding town hall meetings as part of the process to set up a regulatory regime for the sector. Our plan was to set up a pilot project, a small wind turbine at a fish plant on Cape Sable Island. We received funding and were supported by a few senior people in the industry. Squabbling by the founders ended that story.
Wind and solar are the future, and yes Nova Scotia is well positioned. Nuclear energy can also play a role, as Germany showed before Merkel impulsively shut down the sector. Not to mention conservation, as the waste in the energy sector is immense. By historical standards the price of energy is minimal, so why conserve?
Amusingly, the Oak Island show is brilliantly edited with dramatic music, yet at the end of each episode what they have uncovered is precious little. It does, however, put NS on the map, so to speak. The one time I took the tour, once they cleared us out a convoy of expensive black vehicles with NA plates descended. This a was a private tour for senior members of the Freemasons, NA division. Later I met one of them at a restaurant. He gave me his card and I looked him up later. An American, he had an extensive resume working for the federal government (under Reagan), the private sector, and NGOs. "I liked the private sector best," he said. Couldn't make this up.
Before we left Oak Island, a I was lucky to chat with Dan Blankenship, the amateur historian who began the era of modern searches and eventually moved from the US to Nova Scotia years ago. Our meeting was just before he died in in his upper nineties in 2019. Turned out he was a skeptic of most of the theories of who could have done the excavations and he told me just how little real evidence has been found since the initial discovery. One telling historical detail is that the depth of the main shaft precludes most countries from being candidates for doing the engineering work of excavating the shaft. Germany, as I recall, was the country that pioneered the technology, and later some of it was adapted in England. In other words, a lot of the episodes are malarky from the get go. Good marketing though.
Re wind power, while the technology behind renewables, mostly wind and solar, is ramping up fast, it still requires massive subsidies and the North Atlantic is a hostile place, as the oil sector knows. Energy storage is the real trick. Germany sells the electric power to Scandinavia where it is stored in the form of potential energy behind hydro dams, then bought back.
Note: the fossil fuel sector still receives massive government subsidies in many countries where it operates, including Canada, as it were still a fledgling sector just getting started, as it was a century ago when oil was found literally oozing out of the ground. In the US, hyper profitable Exxon doesn't bother to maintain its refineries (let alone build new ones) and pipelines, because, you know, that is a cost.
Thanks for the note.
Before someone else connects the dots for you, I'd like to share with you that I am a Scottish Rite Freemason (32nd degree), and I filmed the pilot footage for Curse of Oak Island, I (and everyone who thinks about it even for a minute) know that the only thing there of value is the story, and I'm a big believer in water storage of energy especially apired with offshore wind.
In the TV business, we call the style of storytelling used in CoOI "What Behind That Rock?" storytelling. It's a very powerful tool.
The way you mock environmental concerns is disguising. Massive wind farms are a hideous blight on the environment and really do great damage to marine life. The 20th century swashbuckling careless oil men are replaced by 21st century equivalents who ravage the planet with “renewables” that are anything but.
Some day fusion reactors will make all of this moot. Until then, fission reactors are a vastly less damaging solution to North American power needs.
Thanks for the note. I don’t mock environmental concerns — I share them. I believe we need to look with clear eyes at all energy options, their tradeoffs, and their consequences.
Offshore wind isn’t perfect. That's a core theme of the essay. Nothing is. But given Nova Scotia’s geography, wind patterns, and shallow shelf, it offers us a once-in-a-generation chance to create sustainable, exportable power — and a new economic foundation that’s not built on digging or burning.
You’re absolutely right that fusion could someday change everything. So could thorium reactors, or something we haven’t yet imagined. But we can't power homes, heat hospitals, or run industry on someday. We have to work with what’s viable now — and build wisely, with accountability and care.
That’s not swashbuckling. That’s planning for a progressive, prosperous, and purposeful future.
willing to swap uranium & fracking for off-shore wind. even FN might be onboard with this, (as long as they are asked FIRST).
Caveats: made in Canada (actually NS, why not, if this is the hot wind location you say it is?).
#2 $ stay here as a priority; #3 juice for Bluenosers is next to FREE; electrification build-out in NS simultaneously with off-sahore wind development.
Thanks for writing this. It's a reminder of the biggest obstacle to a prosperous future for all.
Offshore wind is a path to the future. Not a symbol. Not a gesture. Not a “perspective.” It’s power — literal and figurative — and it’s ours to claim.
We don’t need another committee to weigh the trauma. We need wind on the water, wires to the grid, and work for the next generation. We're exploring a place no one has ever lived and a resource that's only ever been treated as a danger or annoyance.
Let's leave hyphenated Canada behind, with its identity-as-victimhood, with every initiative bending the knee to a thousand tiny vetoes. Progress, purpose, and prosperity can't keep waiting for permission. That's what's holding us back.
So let’s build. In Nova Scotia. With our wind, our people, our hands. Let the money stay here. Let the power flow here. Let the rest of Canada plug in, because we have more than enough to share. The mindset of scarcity, of grievance, of poverty, of 'not enough' has no place in this project.
This isn't about the past. It's not even about the present. It’s about a possible path to the future — and whether we’re charitable and encouraging enough to deserve it.
I have driven along the Eastern Shore — very little economic activity — but everywhere signs telling you to stop fish farming, and stop golf course development. Can’t imagine what the response would be to proposing offshore windmills all along that barren coastline.
It will be great.
I doubt it