At one time, the Commercial Cable Co. Building at Hazel Hill, Guysborough County, Nova Scotia, was one of the main hi-tech buildings in all the continent.
The site was built by two American businessmen in 1888 to break the stranglehold on trans-Atlantic communications by a company based in Newfoundland.
Trans-Atlantic cables came ashore at Canso, which was the next closest point of land to Europe, then overland the short distance to the Hazel Hill operation.
At the time, the cable relay station was at the forefront of the communications revolution carrying telegraphed information back and forth from North America to Europe through over 14-thousand kilometers of undersea cables, and later was tied in to Pacific cables. At its height it was relaying an average of over 3,000 messages a day.
It was the CCC operation that relayed Titanic’s final messages to the world, and the announcement of the end of the First World War.
However, by the 1950’s its technology was outdated, and it closed in 1962, remaining empty ever since.
Realizing it’s importance the Commercial Cable Rehabilitation Society has been trying to find a use for it for the past ten years.
In 2009, the federal and provincial governments kicked in $250-thousand dollars to help maintain it, but it has not been enough to save the neo-classical building now declared beyond repair.
Engineers say the only way to save the history now would be tear it down, and rebuild using as much of the original materials as feasible.
Cost estimates are from three to four million. A Society spokesman says there would be money from various levels of government for that, but then it would cost annually anywhere from $50-80 thousand annually just to operate and there were no commercial or government tenants willing to take on that amount.
Because of that, the Rehabilitation society says it will have to come down in the spring, leaving only the foundation, and a sad loss of another heritage building that marked an important period in Canadian and indeed world history.
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