12/08/2025
My aim here is NOT political; the primary purpose is to inspire the human spirit and building community to look out for one another in tough times *
Written format*
As we all know there has been a myriad of issues that have affected our province in the last few months that have impacted almost every person living in Nova Scotia.
Firstly, I wanted to address the stand still in regard to municipal by laws that effect small farming/homesteading and at home businesses. Some of you reading this may not be aware of your county ordinances and I urge you to investigate and read them carefully. Every county is working to enforce strict by laws in regard to livestock, at home businesses etc. I attended some earlier meetings related to the by laws in MODL; the format was changed to be more impersonal with poster boards and no opportunity to express real concerns. This change in format took the steam out of the people who were vocal and essentially killed any of the push back that was so strong back in March. Our cohesion on the matter has fallen apart. In a world where groceries are unaffordable or families, it is crucial that we don’t give up on our ability to raise our own food.
When I look at the bigger picture though, I understand that people in our province have given up. Our general population in Nova Scotia is beat down, downtrodden and it’s easy to fall in complacency or fall into intense anger and reaction to everything in sight. Being angry is justified but things become cloudy, and we do not actually do anything constructive with that momentum.
Another huge hit to our province and its people is the blatant failure and corruption in regard to the bill increases and security breech with NS power. There are a few lawyers working against this conglomerate, but we also need to say more. There was a protest organized by one of the attorneys and NO ONE showed up in Halifax. Considering that these bills and the bank account hacks have put many Nova Scotians into financial ruin, it’s disappointing to see that we feel so powerless. People in our province already struggle so much with rent, wage issues, grocery prices that none of us needed to be ravaged by basic power needs with obscene bills. No one is being held accountable!
So many people in NS are barely hanging on by a thread.
Another elephant in the room is our lack of resources:
Our most basic infrastructure is in shambles; our hospitals can’t keep up with patient care to the extent that people have died in our emergency rooms. We can’t fault the medical staff because these problems are systemic and absolutely nothing is being done to salvage these institutions.
It goes without saying that if you point out the obvious fact that too many people are currently living here in a system that at a critical point of near failure. If you dare to utter this statement anyone would be slandered and labelled as anti immigrant, disliking people from other provinces etc. Frankly, I don’t have a leg to stand on as I’m not from Canada originally. I was given the opportunity to see the earlier stages of institutional failure when I met my husband nearly 15 years ago. I was warned early on that doctors were in short supply, wages were low, and career opportunities were limited here. I truly feel terrible for people moving here who were swindled into believing the grass is greener here without warning.
The reaction you are seeing rooted in the hard fact of the matter that most Nova Scotians in these conditions can not support themselves. They can not even afford basic needs survive. It’s blatantly obvious when more and more working people are homeless and reno victed every single month in every community.
All of these issues are poisoned with online rhetoric with extreme viewpoints where you are coaxed into camp RED or BLUE, LEFT or RIGHT. If we don’t look at the big picture, we waste time tearing each other apart instead of doing sometime constructive.
We are seeing as a cascade of effects from a downstream of issues that is crushing your average person under the intense weight of not being able to afford life, let alone enjoying it. This brings me to the point about the Fire Ban and the reactions we are seeing. I’ve been sitting in my fields and my garden, pitying how parched it is and watching everything struggle to survive. In a sense it’s a lot like our province, being strangled and sucked dry with every penny we make, pilfered by a broken system that won’t give back to any of us.
This ban was a final straw for so many people, because Nova Scotia is a beautiful place; arguably one of the most beautiful places in North America that we all want to protect and cherish. One of the only things anyone here has left is the bounty of this place and its natural beauty. I think when you take a Gestalt view of these issues and toss this ban on top of it, you can understand why people might feel angry and strained. I’m not saying go out and do something foolish. We all understand these conditions are dangerous, but people do feel slighted that they may be fined for going on a trail in the woods with no intention of lighting a fire to be fined 25K as a non arsonist offender. I’ve found that many of us feel slighted because our province let out a pe*****le who decapitated a little girl after a 25-year sentence. The dregs of our society run free while your average citizen lacks every sense of relief and peace on a daily basis. We have a downtrodden, exhausted and impoverished population and this was a punch in the gut and many people are frustrated. Our people are frustrated by a government that protects criminals, extols developers that destroy our land when in the same breath these people want to brutalize someone for being on a trail. People have nothing left in their province, including the natural world itself. If you back up and rationalize each issue individually you can still conclude that these are all problems, problems that feed into each other and effect the security and wellbeing of every single NS resident.
People in our province do not feel protected financially, they don’t feel safe medically, they don’t feel safe with their ability to produce food, they don’t feel safe from criminal elements. I think we have to understand that our reactions are so much bigger than one issue.
As for Left this and Right that I myself have zero interest in any of it because NO ONE is doing a good job here and doing anything for the residents of this province. The only thing we really have left is each other, your common human being that you can share with, barter, support their business etc. If we don’t start having productive conversations and saying NO to policies and systems that break us down, we will have nothing left. I have no answers for any of this, but all I do know is that things are changing rapidly and the only constant we have is the human spirit and its ingenuity. Be kind to each other, you can listen without agreeing, but I urge you to take a look at the bigger picture and know that if we don’t have each other, we don’t have anything
