Golf
Following his work with the MEA in the early 2000s, Neal Livingston and the MEA shifted their activism gears in the mid-2000s when the American billionaire golf resort owner, Michael Kaiser, showed up in their area with his Canadian partner Ben Cowan-Dewar, and formed Cabot Links golf courses in 2006.
Unfortunately, for about 10 years starting in 2010, many of Neal’s efforts have been directed towards issues around these golf course developments in his community, including illegally building on protected beach lands, and reneging on agreements with the government and community by failing to build two beach access paths, and more.
Geoffrey Livingston (left) and Neal Livingston (right) at the Beach Path Protest in 2016.
Cabot built their first of two golf courses, on 190 acres of beautiful ocean and beach front lands they got for $1.00 from the Inverness Development Association. More than $10 million in zero interest loans were given to Cabot by the Federal and Provincial governments to build their golf courses and accommodations. Unfortunately, this is characteristic of many regional development programs, where business that don’t need public help are the first to receive government largesse. If you are a golfer, you’ll love these courses, but do realize that they were built mostly with our tax money, on land that was given to Cabot for $1.00 in return for a royalty of $1.00 per tee fee per year.
While the community of Inverness gained seasonal jobs, many of them under the table, it lost beach access, suffers from herbicide spraying drifting onto the village, and the MEA and others have fought off several attempts by Cabot to get local, provincial and federal governments to build Cabot an executive jet airport.
In a very long drawn out campaign over 7 years, the last 3 years of which were mostly Neal’s volunteer work, the MEA was able to force the province to make Cabot honour their legal obligations, to build one of the two beach required beach accesses, which opened in 2018.
Geoffrey Livingston (left) and Neal Livingston (right) at the Beach Path Protest in 2016.
The party held to celebrate new beach access on August 30, 2018
Stopping An Executive Jet Airport
In 2011, citizens wrote to the Nova Scotia government and successfully stopped Cabot from receiving lands from the province to build an executive jet airport at the local provincial tree nursery at Strathlorne, near Inverness.
In 2015, it became known that Cabot had convinced Inverness County to build, operate, and maintain an executive jet airport, at the local flyers club landing strip in Margaree Valley, the primary customers of which would be wealthy golfers. The MEA defeated this proposal through an active media campaign, and meetings with provincial government officials. This was an example of local politics at its worst. You can look up Margaree Airport News to learn more about this.
Livingston vs Cabot Links
A legal challenge to stop a Condo Development at Inverness Beach – You can search this court case to see media coverage, looking up Livingston versus Cabot Links.
In 2017, Cabot steamed ahead, amidst major local opposition expressed at a rezoning hearing in Inverness, to prepare to build nine $2.5 million condos, adjacent to the only beach road access to Inverness beach, almost on top of the boardwalk, on a piece of land that was used for generations as a public park and beach access.
In 2018, with no other way to stop it, Neal raised the necessary funds from friends, as well as from myself, and took Cabot to court to attempt to prevent this development, and the loss of public recreational land.
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The case was supposed to be in Halifax, but unfortunately Cabot was able to get it switched to their local area where they understood who the presiding judge would likely be. The judge ruled against Neal in a ruling intended to discourage public interest litigation in Nova Scotia, which included awarding $48,714.00 in court costs against him, to be paid to Cabot within 10 days.
Six months later, Cabot announced that the whole development had been cancelled. So a stinging loss suddenly, in June 2019, became an unexpected and somewhat brilliant win. As one can imagine, Livingston’s year changed in about 3 seconds when he read this, and he planned to treat himself to a relaxing and fun summer in Cape Breton. But suddenly the media was calling about an airport, again.
Airport Round 3
In late May 2019, with a federal election coming the MEA had round 3 of stopping this airport. Suddenly, with no warning, the federal government was set to announce $15 million dollars in grants to Ben Cowan–Dewar ‘s (Cabot’s co-owner) new airport company, together with $3 million from the province, to build an executive jet airport. Ben Cowan-Dewar had a Parliamentary appointment as the head of the Canadian Tourism Commission.
The proposed airport was to be built on or adjacent to a protected wilderness reserve called Mason’s Mountain Nature Reserve, just north of the village of Inverness where the golf courses are located. There was massive public opposition. Cowan-Dewar’s only supporters were the local old-boys network, and nationally by some former politicians and senior business executives.
The MEA stopped it in 5 weeks from happening. The public was furious at the behind-the-scenes machinations that took place in Ottawa to formulate such an offer.
It was the biggest summer news story in Nova Scotia, and covered nationally in the media. For more details of this look up Inverness Nova Scotia Airport News.
It is an amazing story.