Point Tupper, Nova Scotia

Point Tupper (Mi'kmawi'simk: Tui'knek) is a rural community in Richmond County, Nova Scotia, on the Strait of Canso, in western Cape Breton Island.

Extensive land grants in the area were acquired in 1863 by Henry Nicholas Paint, of Belle Vue, Canso, member of Parliament for Richmond (Nova Scotia electoral district), who started to promote a township on the site, a project which he continued doggedly until his death in 1921.

[1] [2] In the 1880s, Point Tupper became the eastern terminal for a railcar ferry service operated from the port of Mulgrave, directly opposite on the western shore of the Strait of Canso.

Point Tupper was also the site of several failed industrial policies, when the Gulf Oil refinery was closed and mothballed in the late 1970s and later dismantled, although its storage tanks remain to this day, now operated by NuStar Energy.

Another more infamous folly involved a heavy water manufacturing plant built in the 1970s following the 1973 oil crisis by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), but quickly closed and later mothballed and dismantled.