Eastern Shore

The Whole is Greater

There’s a saying, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” which refers to the synergy that is created when the pieces all complete each other and contribute to a greater experience.

Owls Head was not appraised by the secret real estate deal guys as the integral part of the whole Eastern Shore Islands that it represents.
The public lands of Owls Head, 700 acres of pristine coastal heathlands, represent an invaluable connection between the Wild Islands project and the Eastern Shore Seaside Park System. They are a classic, representative landscape of parallel quartzite ridges, bogs and coastal spruce forests with a globally rare plant community.

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By Christopher Trider, ago

Michael Gorman Interviews Residents in Favour of the Golf Course and Gary Burrill

Owls Head golf proposal could bring much needed economic development, supporters claim.

CBC’s Michael Gorman interviews Margaret Stevens, Seldon Keating, and Ronnie McKay, local residents that live near the proposed golf course development at Owls Head Park. Then, Michael Gorman hears from NDP Leader Gary Burrill about the Owls Head Act. We have transcribed some of the questions and answers below. You can listen to the whole interview here.

March 3, 2020
CBC Radio
Information Morning

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By Save Owls Head, ago

Opposition to Owls Head Sale Growing Fast

Richard Bell
Eastern Shore Cooperator
February 18, 2020

Full Article Here>

The controversy over Owls Head Provincial Park began on December 18, 2019, when CBC reporter Michael Gorman reported the province had secretly decided on March 13, 2019 to sell Owls Head Provincial Park to a wealthy American who planned to build three golf courses on the site (Lighthouse Links). The decision put in jeopardy hundreds of other parcels of Crown land that the public had previously believed were protected lands that could not be removed from protection without a public hearing.

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By Save Owls Head, ago

Letter: Too Busy Reacting by Karen Schlick

Re: the Feb. 1 opinion piece,  “Conservationists have missed the boat on ecotourism.” The headline should have read: “Developers and governments are missing the boat on ecotourism.”

Conservationists are generally busy running around putting out fires: proposals like salmon farms and golf courses in inappropriate places, gold mines that ignore watershed issues, rampant clearcutting and expropriation of Commons land. 

Where are the conservationists out there with time on their hands and money to burn? Personally, I don’t know any of them.

Karen Schlick, Musquodoboit Harbour

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By Save Owls Head, ago

RICHARD BELL: Eastern Shore rallies behind Owls Head parklands

A behind-the-scenes move by the province to sell the land has the community pushing back.

Originally published here 

Richard Bell
January 30, 2020
The Coast

More than 200 people packed into the Ship Harbour Community Centre in the afternoon on Sunday, January 26 in the latest escalation of a land-use dispute over the selling of protected Crown land to a private developer to build three golf courses—a dispute that also jeopardizes the province’s reputation as a safe place to invest.

… The reaction to Gorman’s revelation has been explosive. Opponents formed the Facebook group, Save Little Harbour/Owls Head from Becoming a Golf Course, on December 19, and it had garnered 2,219 members by January 29. The Nova Scotia branch of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) started an online letter-writing campaign calling on Premier McNeil to cancel the sale of Owls Head. That campaign produced more than 1,000 letters in a few days.

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By Save Owls Head, ago

Owls Head Delisting Threatens Crown Lands Across Province

Full Article Here>

Posted by Richard Bell 
January 14, 2020 3:25 PM
Eastern Shore Cooperator

The revelation that the province’s Department of Lands and Forests has been secretly planning to sell Crown land on Owls Head to a wealthy American couple who own Lighthouse Links Development Company to build as many as three golf courses has stunned Nova Scotians.

For more than four decades, members of the public had every reason to assume that Owls Head would eventually become a fully protected provincial park. As late as the week of January 6th, a Department of the Environment online map of protected areas showed the area as “Owls Head Provincial Park” as late as January.

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By Save Owls Head, ago