BOOKSTORE CANCELS SIGNING AFTER LOCAL MILL’S OBJECTION

A Nova Scotia MLA is raising concerns about freedom of speech after a retail chain cancelled a book signing amid controversy over the book’s portrayal of an area pulp mill. Pictou West MLA Karla MacFarlane says the decision to cancel the book signing at the Coles bookstore in New Glasgow, N. S., was the “wrong move” as it infringes on freedom of speech. Kathy Cloutier, a spokeswoman for Paper Excellence Group, the parent company of the Northern Pulp Nova Scotia Corp. pulp mill, says the mill’s management wrote a letter objecting to the book signing and encouraged its workers to sign and submit the letter to the bookstore “of their own free accord.” MacFarlane says the mill’s opposition to the book appear to have backfired as she predicts Joan Baxter’s book The Mill: Fifty Years of Pulp and Protest will likely sell out.