Tag: halifax

Nova Scotians lament early end to summer after fire risks force ban on many outdoor activities

This article was written by Temur Durrani and was published in the Globe & Mail on August 8, 2025.

Steve Maly, co-owner of outdoor sports store 3 Mile Outfitters in Halifax, pets his dog Colby on Thursday. He says rumours of a possible ban on outdoor activity owing to wildfire risk have circulated for some time.

Standing along the rocky shores of Cape Breton Island, Jonathan Kanary is trying not to feel completely defeated. The manager and backcountry guide of a Nova Scotia adventure-tourism company, Live Life In Tents, has been turning away customer after customer, many of whom drove across the country or flew overseas to be there.

Nearby, atop the Mabou Highlands walled by the Atlantic Ocean, Capes 100 – a world-renowned trail race – has been cancelled this weekend, with organizers issuing deferrals and partial refunds for dozens of participants, while mile-marker signage is being haphazardly taken down by hand.

But they have no other option: With unusually little Maritime rainfall this season, the province has announced a ban on most summertime activities in wooded areas to prevent wildfires.

As growing flames continue to ravage several provinces, scorching more than 6.8 million hectares of land this year and forcing thousands of people from their homes, Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston is taking precautionary measures.

Earlier this week, he placed a moratorium on hiking, camping, fishing, mining, forestry and all other backcountry pursuits. Some beaches and parks may be accessible, though all trail systems are closed, and private landowners in the woods are not allowed to host guests on their properties. Those in violation will face a $25,000 fine.

Set to last until at least mid-October, unless dry conditions improve, the ban will also apply to national parks. As of Friday, that includes pathways and boat services on Cape Breton Highlands and Kejimkujik National Parks, along with most historical sites such as the Fortress of Louisbourg, Melanson Settlement and Fort McNab, Parks Canada told The Globe and Mail.

For many Canadians on the East Coast, the new restrictions mean summer as they know it is over and out.

Steve Maly, co-owner of 3 Mile Outfitters, a Halifax-based outdoor sports store situated on the popular Chain of Lakes Trail, believes most people expected the announcement.

“Rumours about the ban had been spreading already. But what was a shock was just how much of a sledgehammer approach it became,” he said. “Just think of a possible outdoor activity, and you’ll find it to now be restricted.”

The Halifax Regional Water Commission told The Globe it is asking customers to conserve water now so that they can avoid having mandatory restrictions imposed later. The utility added that it has not been able to replenish water in reservoirs for weeks.

Mr. Maly has watched those water levels change. He has also seen dust billow behind runners on provincial trails where it would never have been before.

“It’s hard not to notice how bone-dry everything here is,” said the manager, who also operates a coffee shop attached to his store, the 5K Café. “So, I obviously understand why they needed to do this. But I would have hoped they learned more from past years.”

Although Nova Scotia has faced only roughly 100 smaller wildfires this season, each of which were quickly extinguished, Newfoundland and Labrador is contending with a rapidly deteriorating situation this week.

Around 1,500 people have been evacuated from their communities on Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula, as Premier John Hogan has called upon the Canadian Armed Forces to help with multiple out-of-control blazes. At least 900 of those evacuees were added to the list late Thursday because of a 21-kilometre wildfire near Ochre Pit Cove and Salmon Cove, a short drive from St. John’s.

In announcing the restrictions for Nova Scotia, which are far more severe than in other provinces, Mr. Houston was blunt: “This situation sucks. Summer is one of the best times,” he told reporters Tuesday.

But he said he has been “losing sleep” about what’s happening elsewhere in Canada. On top of that, his government has received briefings that suggest there is no significant rainfall forecast in the near term, he added.

“As tinder-dry conditions continue to persist from one end of the province to the other, the risk of wildfires increases. And the risk is very, very high right now.”

Some councillors at the Halifax Regional Municipality are worried about how the restrictions will affect encampments for homeless people, many of which are in wooded areas.

Rachel Boehm, executive director of community safety for the council, said she is working toward communicating with people at encampments through outreach workers and printed flyers. But she told Tuesday’s council meeting it would take more time.

Travel and activity in the province was also restricted in 2023, when more than 16,000 people were displaced because of two large blazes near Halifax that destroyed hundreds of homes.

Those restrictions were set to last for a month, but were lifted after a week, as conditions improved.

Lorraine DeLuca lived less than 10 kilometres away from the fires in 2023. “It was incredibly scary, and I know none of us ever want to see anything close to that again,” she said.

Ms. DeLuca, Halifax-based president of the Chebucto Hiking Club, has cancelled all plans for the next few weeks.

“But I certainly don’t think these restrictions are heavyhanded,” she said. “Anything that is non-essential that we can cut, I say we do it for preventative action.”

Sara Chappell, co-founder of the Roots and Boots Forest School, agrees. “Still,” she added, “there is a lot of confusion out there.”

The board chairperson of the non-profit recreational camp said she has tried repeatedly to ask the province about whether their locations near Fall Rivers and Lewis Lake, N.S., need to close.

“If we don’t hear anything back by Friday, which we haven’t yet, we’ll have to cancel the last two weeks of summer camp and parents will have to make last-minute arrangements,” Ms. Chappell said.

On Cape Breton, Mr. Kanary said he’s in the same boat.

“We’re looking at about 40 per cent of our bookings being cancelled, and I’m talking about our company doing things in an area that isn’t even remotely in an active fire zone,” he said, adding he’s called every provincial line to seek clarity on the matter.

“Couldn’t they have consulted any of us?”

NOVA SCOTIA PREMIER’S MUSINGS OVER LIFTING OIL-EXPLORATION MORATORIUM RAISE IRE

This article was written by the Canadian Press and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 24, 2025.

Nova Scotia seafood industry representatives voiced concerns Thursday over comments from the Premier that he’s open to ending a moratorium on fossil fuel drilling in the rich Georges Bank fishing grounds.

Premier Tim Houston said Wednesday the province needs to reconsider bans on various industries, including uranium mining and onshore fracking, in order to diversify the economy in the face of tariff threats from U.S. President Donald Trump.

Reporters pressed the Premier on whether that included pressing to lift the moratorium on drilling in the Georges Bank grounds off southern Nova Scotia, which is currently in place until the end of 2032. Mr. Houston responded that while he realizes that citizens have the right to raise questions on any potential risks, proposals to reopen the area to fossil fuel exploration can’t be ruled out.

“I think people have a right to be concerned that it would be done safely, and so those are questions to be answered, but they’re discussions to have,” Mr. Houston said.

“Fishing, farming, forestry, our province was built on these traditional industries … but we also have to have discussions about what we can do safely outside that,” he added.

Richard d’Entremont, president of Acadian Fish Processors Ltd. in Lower West Pubnico, N.S., said in an interview Thursday that reversing the ban on drilling would curtail the fishing grounds and would be a potential disaster for fishers because of the risk of a spill.

“It’s the last thing I want to see because all our quotas are there. We fish there year-round and I’m afraid if they put an exclusive zone around these oil rigs, we’ll lose a lot of territory where we’ll no longer be able to fish,” said Mr. d’Entremont, 75, whose company fishes the area for haddock and pollock.

Kris Vascotto, executive director of the Nova Scotia Seafood Alliance, says the possibility of losing any harvesting from Georges Bank is “highly concerning,” and his group would like some clear statements from the province about “what exactly their plans are.”

Looking at Halifax’s two-year-old climate property tax

This article was written by Oliver Moore and was published in the Globe & Mail on October 7, 2024.

A pedestrian shields themselves from rain in 2023 as post-tropical storm Philippe reached Halifax. Halifax faces specific challenges associated with climate change, and the money from the climate tax helps fund the HalifACT plan for tackling climate change and its impacts.

Mayoral candidates for the coming election this month did not commit to keeping it

On the property tax bill that goes to homeowners in Halifax, there’s a separate line-item for climate action. This is unique among larger Canadian cities – many of which have put little money toward climate change even as they declare it an emergency – and raises about $18-million in dedicated funds each year. But its prominence on the bill is a recurring worry to the city bureaucrat who helps dole out the money.

“Usually when things are called out on the tax bill, they’re at risk,” said Shannon Miedama, Halifax’s director of environment and climate change. “Every year I freak out that it’s going to get debated and pulled, and it hasn’t happened yet.”

One of the tax’s primary champions, Mayor Mike Savage, is not running for re-election this month. When queried by The Globe and Mail, three leading contenders to replace him did not commit to keeping it.

Pam Lovelace said she would consider removing it if the provincial and federal government made changes to their own tax policies. Waye Mason said climate action requires secure funding but did not specify that this meant keeping the tax. Andy Fillmore did not respond to questions about it.

In 2022, Halifax city council raised property taxes by 4.6 per cent, earmarking about twothirds of that for climate action. The average single-family household pays approximately $61 annually to the dedicated fund, according to the city.

“I don’t consider tax a dirty word, but I also don’t think you tax unless you absolutely have to do,” Mr. Savage said during a recent visit to Toronto. “It’s a statement for us, and it’s not an easy statement for politicians to make, that we believe that we need to invest in these things and we’re going to increase property tax to do it.”

Halifax faces specific challenges associated with climate change.

It is in the path of hurricanes, which are retaining strength farther north as seas warm. Its long coastline puts it at risk of sea-level rise. Its land is also sinking, at an accelerating rate.

James Boxall, a geographer at Dalhousie University, was part of a team of experts that told city council in 2010 that Halifax was subsiding at a rate of one-third of a centimetre annually. “It’s now 1/2cm/yr and the rate isn’t slowing,” he said in an e-mail last month.

Halifax’s sprawling footprint means lots of people are living in the wildland-urban interface, where fires pose substantial risk. A relatively modest blaze last year caused $165-million in damage and forced the evacuation of more than 16,000 people in Tantallon, a part of Halifax a halfhour drive from downtown.

The 2022 tax increase was a one-off rise but the money will continue to flow into city budgets unless council decides to change it.

The money helps fund the HalifACT plan for tackling climate change and its impacts. Projects funded under the plan include an energy-efficient community building in a park, solar panels and charging stations at a city depot and work to update flood hazard mapping and projections for extreme water levels.

Decisions about what to fund are made by Ms. Miedama and her team, who vet applications made by other city departments. While some proposals are rejected because they are not close enough to the plan’s goals, in other cases the team is able to shape a project to make it more effective.

“Someone like a parks supervisor will come to us and say ,‘ Oh, we have this flooding issue, do you have money to re-sod the soccer field this year?’ ” she explained.

“And we’ll be like, actually, we have money if you’re willing to get some design work done to do a storm water retention pond under the fields and do this pilot project. Like, are you game? And in that situation they said yes.”

In some cases, she said, the city has been able to tap provincial and federal funds to make its own money go further.

“We take climate seriously, and we’ve taken the impacts of climate change very seriously,” said Mr. Savage, the outgoing mayor. “I often hear from people, well, you know, China and Brazil and India are using coal. Okay, that’s fine, but that doesn’t absolve us of the responsibility to act.”