An Eastern Shore Cooperator Editorial
May 15, 2026
The Eastern Shore District High Building
Needs YOU!
Halifax Regional Municipality says that the Eastern Shore District High Building is worth $4 million (From Property Online).
Building inspections have found that the building is structurally sound.
And recent exploratory drilling has found new water for the site.
The Musquodoboit Harbour & Area Chamber of Commerce and Civic Affairs has been leading an effort to repurpose the school. The Chamber’s Infrastructure Committee conducted three months of conversations and surveys on what kinds of services, activities, organizations, and businesses people thought could be in a repurposed building.
The Committee prepared a detailed report summarizing the input of the more than 200 people who participated. Chamber members also prepared a detailed business plan showing how the building’s users could generate the income to keep the building going.
But unless you act immediately, the province may tear the building down and use the site to build the replacement for the Birches Nursing Home.
Save the EHDS building for the community!
Call Premier Houston today (902-424-6600) and leave a detailed message about why you want to save the building. Or send him an email at [email protected].
How did we get into this mess?
One of the greatest weaknesses of Nova Scotia’s form of government, regardless of which party is in power, is structural: a secretive, siloed decision-making process that all too often excludes the communities impacted by its decisions.
This weakness was on display in the original decision to close ESDH and move the high school to isolated location in a swamp in the Eastern Shore Industrial Park in East Chezzetcook. In this case, the first public mention of the province’s plans was in a speech by then MLA Kevin Murphy in 2014. As we only learned too late from a FOIPOP request, the fix was in from the beginning of this process.
This same weakness is now on full display in the ongoing fight over whether to turn the Eastern Shore District High School building into a community hub—or to tear it down and build the replacement for the Birches Nursing Home on the razed site.
No one disputes that we need to replace the Birches Nursing Home. That the current government is even considering the possibility of tearing down the ESDH as the site of the new nursing home is a painful demonstration of the deeply flawed decision-making processes of government by all three parties.
It was the NDP that first proposed replacing the Birches back in 2013. It was the Liberals who wasted their two terms giving lip service support but failing to act. And now comes the PCs.
Over these 13 years, as with the proposed replacement of the high school, the community has been united around keeping the nursing facility in Musquodoboit Harbour.
So what went wrong?
Why is the current government seriously considering tearing down a structurally sound $4 million building to build a nursing home? (Tearing down the building could cost $1 million.)
Without going too deep into the weeds, what happened was a confusing combination of:
- The HRM Planning Department’s already notorious permitting process;
- The current government’s failure to use the powers it explicitly granted itself to override the obstacles thrown up by HRM Planning;
- The complicated relationships between The Twin Oaks Senior Citizens Association, the Ocean View Continuing Care Centre Society, and Beacon Continuing Care Society. Beacon was formed in 2023 from a combination of members from the boards of Twin Oaks and Ocean View. In a press release Beacon said that “a unified Board of Directors” would be “providing governance and oversight to both long-term care homes.”
For the last three years, it appeared that the new building would be placed on a plot of land subdivided from a larger parcel behind the Railway Museum owned by John Wesley Chisholm.
What happened instead was years of delay by the notoriously obstructive HRM Planning Department. The department’s work was so bad that the PCs finally passed legislation giving the Minister of Housing the power to override HRM Planning by setting up special planning districts. The province even designated the subdivision as a special planning district. But then Housing Minister John Lohr refused to use his new powers.
In the end, Chisholm spent almost 3 years and $800,000 of his and his investors’ money before he finally decided that he could not continue to throw money into a black hole.
Since the province already owns the ESDH site, tearing down the building offers a quick solution to more than a decade of inaction by all three political parties.
The Infrastructure Committee has suggested four other properties within the Harbour to the Birches. We have no way of knowing whether anyone involved in the decision-making process has done a serious evaluation of any of these or other sites in the vicinity that might be suitable.
What we do know is that the loss of this valuable community asset would only compound the wound that the Liberals inflicted on Musquodoboit Harbour, and generations of students to come, by moving the school to a completely isolated spot with inadequate road access and only one exit in event of fire. (Note: when the PCs replaced the Liberals, the PCs knew all about the Liberals’ sordid site selection process, and could have re-opened an honest process, but chose not to, a decision which Houston and PC Minister of Education Becky Druhan approved.)
There’s lots more to this story, but our understanding is one siloed ministry of the provincial government is close to approving the destruction of the high school building. Other ministries may not even be aware of the potential or the need for the building. MLA Kent Smith has been working with Councillor David Hendsbee to address the situation; they both support the building of a new Birches and repurposing the ESDHS building for community needs.
The only person with the real power to save the building is
Premier Tim Houston.
You can reach him by phone at 902-424-6600 and leave a detailed message. Or send an email with your thoughts to [email protected]. It’s a long weekend. He needs to hear directly about why you and so many others want to save this valuable community asset.
