Owls Head resident Beverly Isaacs walks along the shore at Owls Head Provincial Park. Meagan Hancock/The Globe and Mail
Beverly Isaacs stands on the seaweed-strewn rocks, on the land she helped save from being turned into a golf course, and breathes in the ocean air. Walking through an overgrown path, she points out the nectar in the pitcher plant, the saucer-shaped laurel tree, the wild blueberry still in bloom. The place is an unspoilt, pure corner of nature.
If it weren’t for the fight of Nova Scotians like Miss Isaacs, much of that 266 hectares coastal deserts and wetlands and eight kilometers of rocky bays and beaches on the province’s east coast may have been bulldozed by an American developer planning to build a luxury resort.
“The Owl’s head had no voice,” says Ms. Isaacs. “So we used our voices.”
A sign in support of Owls Head Provincial Park is seen next to the Owls Head Municipal sign. Meagan Hancock/the Globe and Mail
Across Nova Scotia, similar battles are being fought — to preserve public rights to the province’s shoreline in the face of expanding private development, to balance economic interests against nature protection.
Actually in June, just like the province was officially announcing that Owl’s Head would become a provincial park, another group of residents, 200 kilometers away on the south coast, started their own protest to stop private construction on the edge of a sandy beach used by the community for generations.
In Halifax, the Environmental Action Center, a conservation group, began investigating why a developer installed a locked gate across a road leading to a pier that local residents have long used for fishing. That same month, the Nova Scotia Supreme Court ruled that a property owner had illegally blocked a public right-of-way to a path leading to Silver Sands, a beach in the Halifax area popular with surfers and dog walkers.
These conflicts over who owns the waterfront only intensify as desirable and expensive waterfront property becomes depleted and private and public interests collide. Meanwhile, nature has its say as sea levels rise and erosion cuts away at coastlines. Next year, Nova Scotia is scheduled to take effect a a new Coastal Protection Act that will require new developments to meet regulated water barriers that will be based on the projected impacts of climate change.
The legislation may ensure that new houses are built more safely, but it does not solve problems with public access to the foreshore. Already in Nova Scotia, more than 80 percent of 13,000 kilometers of coastline is in private hands, Will says Balser, Coastal Adaptation Coordinator for the Environmental Action Center. Conflicts over use have increased in the past few years, he says, because of the construction boom in the province and the shopping boom for waterfront properties.
The result, Mr. Balser says, is that the community road to the beach, used for as long as anyone can remember, can now cross the front yard, not an empty field – violating the privacy of the new owners they thought they were buying at a higher price than ever before. “We’re running out of shoreline that’s accessible to the public,” Mr. Balser says.
The struggle for access can be complex due to overlapping jurisdictions from different levels of government. “It’s hard even for the people involved in the process to know who to go to for what,” says Mr. Balser. In other cases, public highways traditionally used by communities are not formally designated. So while the land below the high-water mark may be “absolutely public,” Mr. Balser says, the public is running out of ways to reach it. And because there is no provincial strategy for preserving shorelines as a public good, conflicts usually have to be settled in court, an expensive endeavor for grassroots community groups.
Part of the shoreline along Owls Head Provincial Park. Meagan Hancock/the Globe and Mail
Court is where the group Save Owl’s Head eventually landed.
The community learned the province had quietly delisted the land as a conservation area when a local CBC reporter broke the story in 2019. The then-Liberal government entered into negotiations to sell the land, although, as the court decision would later outline, its own document the province has identified the area as a nesting site for the piping plover, an at-risk species.
A handful of protesters and a Facebook page grew to thousands of Nova Scotians signing a petition against the sale. Scientists say that the earth is ecologically valuable. In court, the group tried to overturn the government’s decision. The judge ruled that although the land had been represented and treated as a park for decades, the provincial government had acted within its powers.
By the fall of 2021, however, the developer had abandoned plans for the resort, and in June the nearly year-old Progressive Conservative government announced the land would be officially designated as a park.
Now, however, a group is appealing the court’s decision, hoping to make the future process for selling public lands more transparent.
“There’s a real sense of unfairness and unfairness,” said Bob Bancroft, a retired biologist who is one of the leading candidates in the case. “It shouldn’t be up to citizens to try to keep an eye on backroom deals.”
As Owl’s Head pointed out, communities may mistakenly assume that land is protected or that a right of way used for generations is written into the title deeds. And they may learn otherwise only when the land is unexpectedly sold.
The fight for Nova Scotia’s shoreline inspired a determined grassroots activism that required persistence, money and dedication to the cause, even in the face of critics.
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In June, Tala Korkum, a student dormitory for the summer, received a curious call from her grandfather. He was watching construction trucks heading down the road to Eagle Head Beach, near Liverpool, a community 150 kilometers southwest of Halifax. Ms Corkum found that the footpath leading to the beach had been widened and blocked with stones. Residents soon discovered that a plot of land had been sold and the new owner was trucking sand between the beach and the lake.
The beach, a traditional gathering place for locals, was where Mrs Corkham had celebrated birthdays and had a cool swim in early May. She became one of the leaders in the fight to stop any construction for environmental and social reasons – organizing protests at the site, calling municipal and regional politicians and raising the case to the media.
“We just want to protect the coast,” she says, “whether it’s our beach or someone else’s.”
Mrs. Isaacs, meanwhile, never participated in a protest before Owl’s Head. “I like trees,” she says, “but I wouldn’t say I love trees.” She didn’t expect to lose any friendships over her opposition to development. But the community around Owl’s Head was divided, with some wanting the touted economic benefits of the golf resort while others making speeches and signing petitions to fight it. Even now, the road to the new park is dotted with fading signs from both camps.
The signs at Owl Head show the community’s divided opinions. Megan Hancock/The Globe and Mail
Conflict also arose questions about who has the floor; Ms. Isaacs, for example, is a Nova Scotian by birth but moved to the area just eight years earlier. “They told me to keep my mouth shut,” she says.
Standing at the edge of the newly designated parkland, she and Wallace Publicover, another resident-turned-activist whose land borders Owl’s Head, share the lessons they’ve learned.
The Wallace Publicover land runs adjacent to the recently protected Owls Head Provincial Park. Since there is no trail, access to the park is limited. Meagan Hancock/the Globe and Mail
Be loud and persistent, says Mr Publicover. Take the high road, says Mrs. Isaacs. Find allies and environmental experts to support saving the earth. Stick to the facts, adds Mr Publicover. “Be honest and keep the science behind you.”
Ultimately, organizers suggest, the dispute over Owl’s Head came down to vision: Why a golf course and not a place that could inspire ecotourism, held in trust for generations? Since 2005, for example, the Mahone Islands Conservation Association has been able, through donations and government dollars, to acquire 20 island and beach properties in the waters of Mahone Bay.
In early July, after weeks of public protests against Eagle Head, the municipality withdrew the building permit for the site, at least for now. Borough Mayor Darlene Norman declined to comment on the decision, citing legal advice.
“There’s so much here if you open your eyes,” says Ms. Isaacs, pausing her tour of Owl’s Head. So much beauty, she says, that once sold and developed, would have been lost forever if it weren’t for the people who came together to protect it. “I come here and go home feeling grounded.” Plus, knowing now, she won’t be the last generation to enjoy it.
Beverley Isaacs enters a wetland at Owls Head Provincial Park. Meagan Hancock/The Globe and Mail
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