Sold! Mi'kmaq group confirms purchase of CBC land
Land near Sackville where 13 Radio Canada International towers once stood has been sold
A Mi'kmaq group has bought the land outside Sackville where 13 Radio Canada International towers stood for decades, CBC-Radio Canada confirmed Friday.
Five years after the Tantramar Marsh site was put up for sale, the New Brunswick non-profit Mi'gmawe'l Tplu'taqnn bought it for an undisclosed price.
"This transaction closes the book on an interesting chapter for CBC/Radio-Canada and Canadian broadcasting in the world of international shortwave broadcasting," CBC's Martin Marcotte wrote in an email.
A long broadcast history
The shortwave service ran for 67 years, and the site's towers facilitated the service around the world until budget cuts in 2012.
The 90-hectare property was initially listed with the towers, to avoid the high cost of dismantling the facility, but in 2014, CBC began dismantling the towers in hopes the blank slate would entice more buyers.
"It's tough to take something down that served such a purpose for the country, you know, during the Second World War," Larry Wartman, CBC's senior manager of transmission operations for Western and Atlantic Canada, told CBC News in 2014. "There's just not that many of them around the world anymore."
Building the future
The New Brunswick Mi'kmaq group Mi'gmawe'l Tplu'taqnn purchased the land Thursday but has yet to announce any plans or comment on the purchase, other than to confirm it. The non-profit group's members are the nine Mi'kmaq communities in the province.
Mi'gmawe'l Tplu'taqnn means "how we govern ourselves" and the group's mission is to "to promote and support the recognition, affirmation, exercise and implementation of the inherent Aboriginal and treaty rights of its member First Nations, including the right of self-determination."
The purchase price is still unknown.