Elin Nordegren, famously known as Tiger Woods’ ex-wife, had the New York gossip-mongers in a tizzy in early December.
Nordegren appeared at the launch of Marchesa shoes in a Marchesa dress with a plunging neckline and with Chris Cline, her billionaire ex-boyfriend — and her first boyfriend post-life-with-Tiger — on her arm.
Cline is often referred to as King Coal, a self-made man, straight out of West Virginia — where his grandpappy dug for the stuff with a pickaxe — an American success story. The 57-year-old owns a yacht with a submarine, and made a fortune by betting on American coal mining when no one else was willing to make that bet.
His company, Foresight Reserves, and the subsidiaries thereof, operate several mines in Illinois, although lately King Coal has been betting on something new. Something that didn’t make the tabloids in December: a long discussed, practically fabled, partially developed — though never actually operational — Cape Breton coal mine, buried deep beneath the seabed off the Donkin Peninsula.
“It would be great to get that mine opened up and get work at home,” says Gordie Peckham, a veteran coalminer from nearby New Waterford, N.S.. Peckham was in faraway Alberta Friday morning when we spoke, waiting for a hot shower and a bed after working the nightshift on an oil project in Fort McMurray.
He has had two interviews with Kameron Collieries, the Cline-owned company in charge of the Donkin mine project. He hasn’t heard word yet, good or bad, about a job. But he has been hearing plenty of talk about the mine out West.
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