Lingan (2021 population: 229) is a Canadian

suburban A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separate ...

community in

Nova Scotia Nova Scotia ( ; ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland". Most of the population are native Eng ...

Cape Breton Regional Municipality Cape Breton Regional Municipality (often referred to as simply "CBRM") is the Canadian province of Nova Scotia's second largest municipality and the economic heart of Cape Breton Island. As of 2016 the municipality has a population of 94,285. The ...

. Lingan is located on the shore of the

Cabot Strait Cabot Strait (; french: détroit de Cabot, ) is a strait in eastern Canada approximately 110 kilometres wide between Cape Ray, Newfoundland and Cape North, Cape Breton Island. It is the widest of the three outlets for the Gulf of Saint L ...

, northeast from

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

, east of New Waterford and northwest of

Glace Bay Glace Bay (Scottish Gaelic: ''Glasbaidh'') is a community in the eastern part of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality in Nova Scotia, Canada. It forms part of the general area referred to as Industrial Cape Breton. Formerly an incorporated t ...

. The community occupies a headland which forms the north side of Lingan Bay, to the south, and forms the western shore of Indian Bay, to the east. Lingan was an active

coal mining Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

area from the early 19th century until 1999 when the last

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...

mines in the community operated by the

Cape Breton Development Corporation The Cape Breton Development Corporation, or DEVCO, was a Government of Canada Crown corporation. It ceased operation on December 31, 2009, after being amalgamated with Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation (ECBC). DEVCO was organized primarily in ...

, or DEVCO, were closed. The most recent mines in Lingan operated by DEVCO included the Lingan Colliery and the adjacent Phalen Colliery. They were served by the

Devco Railway The Devco Railway was a Canadian railway. Devco Railway operated as an unincorporated department within the Coal Division of the Cape Breton Development Corporation, also known as DEVCO; as such there is no formally incorporated entity named " ...

, formerly the Sydney & Louisburg Railway. In the late 1970s, the

Nova Scotia Power Corporation Nova Scotia Power Inc. is a vertical integration, vertically integrated electric utility in Nova Scotia, Canada. It is privately owned by Emera and regulated by the provincial government via the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board (NSUARB). Nov ...

constructed the

Lingan Generating Station The Lingan Generating Station is a 620 MW Canadian coal-fired electrical generating station located in the community of Lingan in Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Regional Municipality. Lingan is operated by Nova Scotia Power Inc. and is their largest ...

to generate electricity from coal. This plant is still in operation and currently uses coal imported from the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

which is shipped to Sydney and hauled by the

Sydney Coal Railway The Sydney Coal Railway is a Canadian Short-line railroad, short-line railway operating in the eastern part of Cape Breton County, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton County, Nova Scotia. SCR operates from the international coaling piers on Sydney Harbour ...

. Lingan has a long history of Irish heritage with some of the most prominent names being Burke, Handrigan, Hall, Hanrahan/ Handrahan, Kelly, Laffin, Miller, and Rockett many of these families have roots going back 7 generations and they continue to live in the community. During the mid-first decade of the 21st century nine large

wind turbine A wind turbine is a device that converts the kinetic energy of wind into electrical energy. Hundreds of thousands of large turbines, in installations known as wind farms, now generate over 650 gigawatts of power, with 60 GW added each year. ...

s were erected in Lingan along the cliffs on the Northern Head. During World War2 the US army had an observation post here to be on the outlook for German U-boats who were confirmed to have been in the immediate vicinity stalking merchant marine convoys out of Sydney Harbour.

Demographics

In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by

Statistics Canada Statistics Canada (StatCan; french: Statistique Canada), formed in 1971, is the agency of the Government of Canada commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and cultur ...

, Lingan had a population of 229 living in 101 of its 106 total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of 261. With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.

References

Lingan on Destination Nova Scotia
{{Coord, 46, 14, 1.7, N, 60, 2, 38.3, W, display=title Communities in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality Designated places in Nova Scotia Mining communities in Nova Scotia General Service Areas in Nova Scotia

Demographics

See also

References