Shunpiking Online Vo.3 No.2 Cramming a development into a quiet nook and cranny By CYNTHIA MARTIN*

INGRAMPORT -- I'VE NEVER CARED FOR HORSES, but when the stable on Hammonds Plains Road is sold to a subdivision-maker like the fields down the road, I'll sure miss watching their tails flick as they munch and I drive by burning up $1-a-litre gas.

Although Katherine's organic store is a favourite haunt, I power-shop at the national chain across the Bay road where meadows recently grew. And although I load my wicker basket with farmers' vegetables at Saturday's market, I'm in that 8 a.m. lineup for buttery chocolate croissants -- definitely a contradiction for my thighs. Justifying the scale of contradiction isn't easy though -- it's like being pregnant: either you are or you aren't. But there's one contradiction in this ocean playground I can't rationalize in any serious or quirky way.

When you drive out of Halifax on a muggy summer

Crown land/water is for all the public, under stewardship for the future, surely takes precedence over any short-term gains for a few

day and take that first turn to face the ocean, the salt air hits. Now when you drive out, the wet dropping leaves flame yellow and you can smell those, too.

But when we drive past a narrow strip of land on the final curve of this raw beautiful cove, the scent changes to the questionable reek of progress: a proposal for "development" radically alters the water, sky and landscapes, doubles the number of residents and dumps as much infill into the ocean as one US state requires for a glider airfield.

The developer applied for a lease of Crown seabed to construct

A deep throat in the city offices says once they build, it's 'destiny' -- there'll be more parking and the 10 additional townhouses originally planned will soon follow in the thin-edge-of-the-wedge principle

a permanent breakwater and wharf-like structure along the shoreline into the intertidal zone, surely an installation that can't be rolled under any definition of a "lease." The fact Crown land/water is for all the public, under stewardship for the future, surely takes precedence over any short-term gains for a few.

The locals are supposed to be thankful since it's now only 17 townhouses (2,700 square feet for six people each, parking for two cars each, swimming pool, treated sewage pumped into the bay). A deep throat in the city offices says once they build, it's "destiny" -- there'll be more parking and the 10 additional townhouses originally planned will soon follow in the thin-edge-of-the-wedge principle.

In living here, residents happily gave up any expectations of city services like weekly garbage collection, local police and even pizza delivery -- a service that should be enshrined in Canada's Charter of Rights. We live here to appreciate the daily joys and simple small encounters like watching porpoises roller-coaster through the bay and herons perch on ocean rocks. We live here for the peace at dusk and pheasants that skitter across the two-lane highway. No one -- family generations or the come-from-aways -- wants to see these quietly sensual attributes of living disappear.

Tourists also don't come to Nova Scotia for a subdivision feel or parking lots -- author Alice Munro was surely on vacation here when she said half her time is spent looking out the window. Visitors come to get away from the overwhelming senses of city life, preferring ocean views and skies with stars instead of 24-hour street lamps and trendy townhouses that transport them back to downtown wherever.

It's not a contraction for residents as whether city or rural, we all travel to and enjoy the attributes of each. I do believe the city drivers heading out to Queensland Beach for the day want to see the bay and beaches -- not more city.

Visitors love to talk to Junior, our 75-year old lobsterman out at five every morning in season hauling in traps. Today, he's charming drop-ins from North Carolina as he jumps from story to story, generous with his time; precious now considering in a few years there might not be a Junior.

Fishing since he was a boy, his livelihood threatened by the "progress" of fake lobster condos being developed, he sets buoys where the proposal’s breakwater wall aims to go, with boat launch, septic pipes and docks all bleeding who knows what into the pristine bay (31 slips, floating dock, motorized boats/jet skis, artificial lobster habitats). At 370 feet – a distance baseball’s Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire routinely smacked out of the park – almost half the bay is marked. Like someone peeing in a swimming pool, which water wouldn’t be affected? If that goes in, Junior and the fishers can pack up their traps and sail away from the bay they’ve fished for generations.

Residents aren't anti-development, anti-job or have a 'we got here first' mindset, but not all development is good or sustainable.

Residents aren't anti-development, anti-job or have a "we got here first" mindset, but not all development is good or sustainable. It's the scale and density that's perplexing; 100-plus people and 50-plus parking spaces on a lot fit for three or four houses? Wells for hot tubs in a water table already threatened?

With the temptation of massive property tax revenues, expanding the boundaries of urban growth is one enticing contradiction for Halifax. With all other interests finite -- the company's, politicians' terms and city jobs -- it's the environment, marine life, birds and residents who'll exist long-term with the outcomes.

At an October meeting, the Western Region Community Council of three HRM councillors -- all aware of the landscape and concern of the residents -- approved the proposal to go forward yet again to another community meeting. This after the latest meeting showed a vote of 100 people against and the two developers voting in favour.

One big reason for approval? Many years ago, there used to be a lumber mill and home-building company operating on the site. The logic for this in support is perplexing -- it's highly doubtful either of those industries would have been allowed at the corner of Barrington and Duke even in 1950.

Like always here, summer faded fast but the kayakers will still be paddling at month's end when yet another community meeting is held, November 28 at the Black Point Fire Hall, where perhaps condos might sprout one day. My young daughter is patient and observant when the locals talk in kitchens and in the aisles of that Superstore -- she knows we're trying to protect the bay for many more generations of Juniors.

No contradiction here -- these are not anyone's resources to abuse and surely economic gain for a few can't justify the infinite expense and long-term environmental pain. If we can't find the answers to the contradictions of life and progress inside, we just have to look outside.

*Cynthia Martin lives in Ingramport. This articled was originally published as a letter in the Chronicle Herald, Halifax, 24 November 2006