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I doubt that the placard-waving people gathered in front of the Nova Scotia legislature this week to protest the government’s unwillingness to decisively protect our coastline had numbers on their minds.The first is Nova Scotia’s length tip-to-tip, about 580 kilometres, ensuring that we will always be among Canada’s smallest provinces.
That, I feel compelled to emphasize, is not much less than the distance from Halifax to Antarctica, a notion that is almost too much for my low-wattage brain to handle.In my view, the sheer magnitude of the coastline is as amazing in its way as the rise and fall of the tides in the Bay of Fundy. That is one reason — although far from the only one — why the Houston government’s decision not to proclaim the Coastal Protection Act is so puzzling.
The result, critics say, will be a patchwork of development rules across the province, administered by municipalities without the resources or knowledge to properly do the job.The province, in fairness, has promised to fund a new coastal protection co-ordinator for the Nova Scotia Federation of Municipalities, to help local governments without the resources to handle these new coastal development issues.
The world has discovered Nova Scotia. And with that newfound popularity has come increased pressure to develop its coastline — and the inevitable conflict with those worried about what those homes, cottages and commercial developments mean to beaches and shorelines. Shorelines support all sorts of marine, bird, and vegetative life. They provide livelihoods and sustenance for humans.
The other day, with these thoughts buzzing around in my head, I walked over to a small beach, once guarded by dunes which had been pounded flat by recent storms, and picked my way through some washed-up seaweed, down to the water.
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