On January 12, 2023, Cowan-Dewar called Steve Sutherland of Information Morning - Cape Breton, to explain why he thinks that one third of West Mabou Beach Provincial Park should be handed over to Cabot. 

You can listen to the conversation here.

The logical kinks in Cowan-Dewar’s article are various, but I will zone in on only one of them here.

Cowan-Dewar tells us a story: I will title it “Let’s Build Magic Golf in Protected Sand Dunes.”

It goes a little something like this:

Once upon a time, there was no “process in which protected sand dunes had been built in in Nova Scotia.” Enter golf visionary Mr. Cowan-Dewar, who believed when no scientist or ecologist dared, that protected sand dunes and golf were totally sympatico.

Cowan-Dewar and Cabot worked with the Nova Scotia department of the environment, the Nova Scotia department of Natural Resources, and, yes, third-party environmental consultants and ecologists to discover a way to build golf in protected dunes.

The Tasmanian government was consulted. (Naturally.)

And, lo and behold, Nova Scotia found a way, a process, to build golf in protected sand dunes. (Dewar-Cowan tells us that this process would work in Mabou too.)

Except they didn’t.

On May 10, 2018, Former Deputy Minister of Natural Resources Duff Montgomery had this to say when he was speaking to the committee of economic development in Nova Scotia:

“One of the examples is the golf course in Inverness. The gentleman comes forward, markets it as a destination, first tranche (chance) he invests all his own money, et cetera, and then he looks to do a second course and there’s a dune involved. We have strict legislation around altering dunes for all the right reasons. I said to my team - biologists and all my scientific people - when you’re dealing with him, is there a way we can find a marriage that helps them but also helps preserve the environment?

Part of the options we have is if the company we’re dealing with commits to buying other land that can stay protected, that’s pristine. That’s what they did. They bought - I can’t remember how many acres of land around a lake in Inverness, and of course, they have a world-class golf course, and the economic side of Inverness is just booming. I think if you were to even go on the beach, you would hardly see a dune that was altered - other than there’s one hole, I think, that’s surrounded by dunes.”

Cabot builds luxury real estate and exclusive golf courses. They are not environmentalists. They are not elected government representatives who are meant to listen to us. Simply put, they are developers who want land that our government, based on a plan titled Our Parks and Protected Areas, has protected from development.

In a better world, companies like Cabot would respect our protected spaces, and the collaborative process that led to them being so.

And our government would answer important questions with urgency and clarity.

On Cabot’s plans, Premier Houston has said, "If something comes before the government, we'll look at it through the lens that we would normally look at things, but to speculate on it ... there's lots of things to speculate on. That's why I try to reserve my energy to [deal with] the number of real issues that are actually on the desk.”

There is a real issue on Premier Houston’s desk that is being ignored. We are asking our top elected government official to tell us that our protected lands are safe from development, as they are supposed to be. Why are our concerns not “real” but a request from a developer to build golf on a protected space would be “real”?  

If you believe that Premier Houston should answer the questions being put to him by thoughtful constituents, why not tell him so?

Phone: 902-424-6600
Fax: 902-424-0728
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