Who wants to buy low-quality coal?
By Lethbridge Herald on June 18, 2025.
Editor,
It happened back in the early ‘50s. That’s when the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) converted from steam power to diesel engines. Result: Alberta’s Crowsnest Pass coal lost its primary market.
Crowsnest Pass coal, ideal for powering steam engines, can’t compete economically with British Columbia in terms of suppling metallurgical coal. Mining engineers, coal mining companies, and geologists have reported this simple fact for decades.
What’s happened as a result? Crowsnest Pass coal mines closed during the following three decades due to the Elk Valley’s thicker, superior, and much more easily mined seams of metallurgical coal.
What’s changed of late to alter the economic picture? Nothing! Certainly not the geology of the Rocky Mountains.
Perhaps the CPR, in a wish to define its future by relaunching its storied past, plans to fire-up yesterday’s rusting boilers to create a steamy tomorrow offering Crowsnest Pass coal a market?
As we wait for the CPR to steam boldly into tomorrow’s sunrise, let’s celebrate quality-of-life living and the internationally revered beauty and intrigue of Alberta’s Crown of the Continent landscape. Let’s treasure and protect the headwaters of the drought-plagued Oldman Watershed and its 200,000 downstream residents.
David McIntyre
Crowsnest Pass
10-9
Well said David. My late father was a Power Plant Engineer for 38 years and was dead set against burning coal and the pollution it created. He knew natural gas was the answer. He could produce twice as much electricity using it.
Supposedly they are looking for a specialized coal for steel making industry. They say that it’s not for traditional burning fuel for heating.