By Wyn Jones
In March of 2018, the Government of Canada announced the creation of the Eastern Shore Islands Marine Protected Area (MPA), commissioning a review to encompass all the cultural, economic and commercial activities on the Eastern Shore. A full study was duly conducted and its findings published in July 2019.
That was then and this is now.
How things have changed. Six months after the study, along came Covid. At first barely recognised as not much more than a bad flu variant. Over the ensuing fifteen months, we have watched our lives contract into isolation and boredom laced with the awful threat of ending up on the nasty end of a respirator.
So, all the assumptions and the realities of the MPA report are now beyond useless. As we gradually emerge from the clutches of the pandemic, our lives will be much changed as will be the Eastern Shore itself. There has already been an influx of new people from other parts of the province as well as from other parts of Canada, particularly Ontario and more are coming. The housing market alone has shown a rapid increase in sales, with new builds and renos already in the works for the coming year.
We have been afforded the privilege of a new start at a watershed time of coming change for our collective communities. We have an opportunity to make our various levels of government fully aware that our expectations for the place we call home have radically changed.
With the prospect of substantial growth coming to the Shore, we must demand a greater share of the decision-making process where it directly involves our every day lives. The whole process of a selection of a new high school site, for example, has caused a great deal of upset and bitter feeling with both sides at loggerheads over what should have been a collective choice taken without rancour.
Instead, the Provincial Government, with its penchant for close-door decision making, has succeeded in creating an extraordinary amount of bad feeling through the entire community.
The whole secretive dealings over the Owl’s Head Provincial lands is just yet another example of the government’s blatant disregard for genuine concerns that many have over what is being done with our Eastern Shore by those who don’t live here and just don’t care.
We need to make the three levels of government and the lead-footed bureacracy understand that the Eastern Shore has always been an area of the province that is as distinct as the Valley or Cape Breton. Our unique geography, our geology, ecology, marine life and all else is here. We cannot and should not be lumped in with Halifax when their problems and concerns are entirely different from those that we experience.
Change is happening fast. We have a window in time to establish new norms with regard to the governance of the Eastern Shore. We have Provincial elections coming in the near future which will give us the chance to vote for real change. And we should now be shouting “change” at the top of our voices.
