Success Stories

The History of Coal Mining in Cape Breton

A vital part of Cape Breton's history and development

For newcomers to the multimedia frontiers of Internet web page design, the temptation is often to reach for all the available bells and whistles but for Sean Coyle, the secret to success is letting the content dictate the look.

And so, when the topic is the troubled history of coal mining on Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island, the tone ought to be understated, sober and reflective. Indeed, there's nothing jazzy or gimmicky about Sean Coyle's web site; most of it is black and white, the images are evocative, yet used sparingly.

"The philosophy we've developed is that we won't put something on the site unless it benefits a visitor in understanding what we're trying to get across" says Coyle, 28, who produced the Cape Breton coal mining web site under contract with Industry Canada's SchoolNet Digital Collections program. "If something is just there for glamour or glitz, we were not going to use it."

The Digital Collections program, funded by the federal Youth Employment Strategy, has enabled over 1400 young Canadians (ages 15-30) to gain valuable work experience in the multimedia sector. By converting significant Canadian content for display on the Information Highway, Canadian youth have not only gained skills for knowledge-based employment but have provided greater access to Canadian holdings located in archives, libraries, museums, associations and other sources.

As co-founder and president of Virtual Media Productions Ltd. in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Coyle and his two collaborators were looking to expand their scope of activity. Until then, they had focussed on CD-ROM publishing, created virtual reality tours and produced more modest web pages. When the opportunity arose to participate in the Digital Collections project, the company hired two additional workers and set out to build a handsome and informative product.

Coyle opted for a topic that is of overwhelming importance to the people of the region. "Coal mining is huge in Cape Breton," Coyle explains. "It's always an issue. And because it's happening right here, we felt it was important to shed light on both the good times and the bad."

Coyle, who has studied political science, French and multimedia technology at various Nova Scotia post-secondary institutions was determined to make the site as factual as possible, hoping people elsewhere in Canada and around the world would understand Cape Bretoners' powerful relationship with the coal mining industry. "We didn't want to make it a whine session, or get people to feel sorry for us," he insists.

The team found most of the content for the web site at the Cape Breton Miner's Museum in Glace Bay. Thomas Miller, the museum's director, was delighted that Coyle hatched the idea for the site. "It's going to make the collection accessible to a lot more people," he notes.

Miller also applauds Coyle's team for the calibre of their work, which included scanning photographs, repackaging segments of historical texts, and sorting out copyright issues. "They were a very professional bunch of young people in their approach to us and how they handled everything," Miller says. As Coyle looks back on the project, he says he gained valuable people and project management experience during this Internet project, which is bigger than anything he had ever tackled before. "We were dealing with a sizable amount of information," he says. "And as we went through the process from start to finish, it became very clear to us that it was more complicated - exponentially."

Meanwhile, for Coyle's company, the experience had another lasting benefit. One of the young people working on the Digital Collections project was hired on full-time after the project ended.

Visit the SchoolNet Digital Collections World Wide Web Site at http://collections.ic.gc.ca