Our future as an air gateway for the strait region and western cape breton can benefit greatly from an island-wide gateway strategy.

In order to improve our Island gateways, one crucial ingredient is needed:

Collaboration.

the Strait Area Chiefs, Mayors and Wardens Committee, and the One Cape Breton/Unama’ki leadership have fostered collaborative momentum.

We have the One Nova Scotia guide that demonstrates that collaboration is the best way to grow our regions and our Province of Nova Scotia.

Read the Full One Nova Scotia Report →

We can all agree with the importance of growing Our Island Together.

Our Island’s 5 First Nation Mi’kmaw Councils and 5 Municipal Councils are committed to collaborate and cooperate with all stakeholders and citizens to grow a strong future in partnership with the Federal and Provincial Governments. There are many ways we can do this. One important way is to take an island-wide collaborative and integrated approach to strengthen our existing transportation assets, particularly the gateways to our Island from air, land, and sea.

The Town of Port Hawkesbury is interested in engaging with local Island leaders, stakeholders and citizens to garner interest for this Island-wide gateway project.

Our Island leaders and stakeholders first discussed an integrated and collaborative gateway plan in April of 2019 at our One Cape Breton/Unama’ki gathering in Membertou.

we Can move forward as an island with an inclusive, collaborative and integrated Gateway strategy. Working collaboratively will position our Island to compete globally (rather than internally)

As discussions continue, we have a unique opportunity to engage as an entire Island to improve our gateways by land, air and sea. Creating an effective gateway strategy for our Island will require an integrated approach to identify our inter-modal transportation potential.

An integrated inter-modal Island-wide transportation approach can serve to better connect our Island, even the farthest reaches. A gateway strategy can explore ways we can improve on our existing transportation assets like roads, air, port, rail, and subsidiary modes of transportation like helicopter, tranisit and marine services.

Visitor Trends.

Improving and building on our gateways and inter-modal transportation links will require a good understanding of visitor trends. It will also require a substantial amount of consultation and collaboration between our local governments, stakeholders, and citizens.

Tourism industry stakeholders and development organizations collect and use visitor data to inform and update the evolving plan for Nova Scotia tourism. We must understand how people are arriving (land, air and sea) as we create a plan for our Island. This plan is to ensure ALL of our business and industry partners are benefiting. We want to be a welcoming Island. We want to invite visitors to stay longer, to travel farther, to return again, and above all, to consider making Cape Breton their home.

1.1 million

VISITORS TO NOVA SCOTIA ARE FROM ATLANTIC CANADA (2018)

Source: Tourism Nova Scotia

The Future.

Improving our existing transportation gateways and infrastructure related to air, rail, road and port will be increasingly important to the future prosperity of our Island.

Continuing to improve, diversify, and maximize benefits to our gateways, and creating an Island-wide inter-modal transportation strategy will improve business and industry retention and attraction, as well as better serve the users and stakeholders who depend on them.