Worth Saving.

God forbid, you endure an essay in my terrible handwriting. But also, there's just too much to say. How even to begin?

This will be a long one. If you're more here for easy reading comics and not walls of texts, skip down to the bottom for relevant info for you as a Patreon subscriber here.

Here is West Mabou Beach Provincial Park on a map of Cape Breton.

It used to be private land, but in 1982, parcels of land were expropriated with the intention of protecting this coastal area for the public. So it is our beach. And it always was the community beach, even when it was private. We all learned how to swim here. I took biology class trips here. I have had many family gatherings here. We were always told, emphatically, from the time we were children: stay off the dunes. Do not damage this place by wrecking the sand dunes.

That's me in the rainbow suit looking very snazzy, rainbow was my favourite colour at the time.

Ever since this land became public, though, at different times, business interests have tried to come in and set themselves up for profit. Every time, the community has to come out and stop them, which is deeply unfair to everyone. Protected land should be protected.

No company has tried harder to get this land than Cabot. Cabot is a golf company. They have holdings in several countries now, in 2025. But Inverness, 20 minutes north of Mabou, was their first, and it opened in 2011. It went like this. The town of Inverness was interested in economic development. It once housed a coal mine, and now that land belonged to the town, but had no proper use. It was also right on the ocean. Inverness was looking into the possibility of a golf course, and Cabot came knocking in the form of Ben Cowan Dewar. If you google him, you will find many fawning articles from golf lovers everywhere.

In Inverness, back in the 2000s, the town sold the land for what would become Cabot Links to Ben Cowan Dewar for one dollar. The promise was economic prosperity. And Cabot Links opened to great fanfare. Real estate in the area rocketed. People invested in the area, new businesses opened.

Businesses also closed down. Local people got priced out of houses - but the housing crisis is everywhere. People in construction did great. Cabot promised jobs jobs jobs, and mostly delivered on what you think they did - seasonal, low paying work like housekeeping. Cabot built their golf course and are still building there with a gated community style to it. They don't want their guests looking at the town, or going there for anything. And they do not invest in the town, they sponsor any events, they don't fund public amenities, none of that usual corporate do-good stuff that you may expect. Cabot agreed to keep certain beach access points public, and then did not and had to be fought on it. Inverness, the town, mostly was supposed to enjoy trickle-down benefits of the golf course existing there. And some people look at the place and say wow, Cabot did a lot of good. I am not one of those people. It did some good. But Inverness is still a town down to one gas station that doesn't even have a mechanic. Cabot comes across as bullies whenever they want something. And it is hard to beat them, they are billionaires.

They want West Mabou Beach Provincial Park, for another golf course. They are welcome to buy private land, but they won't, they keep going after this piece of protected land instead. It would cost them much less to cut a deal with the government than to buy what land is worth.

Here is a view of the land of the park, a map of the park, and Cabot's proposed golf course, on top of the park.

Sometimes, the contempt for rural residents, here in Nova Scotia and anywhere, is just too much. The last time Cabot made an attempted land grab was in 2022-2023, and they got lobbyists from the local populace to go in for them and and offer (what sure looked like) bribes to different community committees. They intentionally sewed division among us, trying to get what they want. And it was awful.

If you want more on that, you can read it here, in my letter to the editor.

No place is a monolith. There are people here who hate the idea of a golf course. There are people here who think it would be the best thing in the world. And there are people on the fence.

You know me. If you have been here long enough, I think I can say with confidence that you know me. I love my community. I take almost every bit of understanding of who I am and my place in the world from my home. It's a place that gives me strength. Many of us here are not just neighbours, but intimately interconnected through many generations. We love and protect each other. There is a hesitancy to speak out against one person, because it might hurt that person's mother, who you love. Because you work with their sister. Because you were in their class. Because you know them, you have known them your whole life, you know the good in them, and you could never disavow them. Outside of a few forceful personalities, this is the way it is. And if someone is adamantly for the golf course, you don't want to fight them, because it is legitimately painful.

This is one of the things I love best about my home. A whole-hearted acceptance of a person, a vision of them as themselves, and their family, and their life, and their gifts, and their human failings all in the same glance. We belong to each other.

It is a raw, wounding thing for a lot of people here to get into this. They want the good in us to carry the path forward. When you see division being sewn in this place, by people who have personal gain in mind, whether from inside the community or without, it feels as though this best thing about us is being weaponized against us. and I cannot abide anyone who would abuse that.

If you need more proof that Cabot doesn't give a fart about communities or land protection, take a look at this research I did into their bid to scoop protected forest land in Florida. Though I owe a lot of that to the staff of the Tampa Bay Times.

Cabot wants this public land for their golf course, the government wants to help them do it. They are going to have to go through me, and through my neighbours, and through my friends. We have had enough of this.

But that's not all.

Another thing.

After winning a majority provincial government in the election earlier this year, Tim Houston and the Nova Scotia Conservative party announced an ambitious plan to do something that they never campaigned on. "Taking the No out of Nova Scotia." This means, broadly, powering through any restrictions to economic development when it comes to natural resources. Saying that resource development that would make us all wealthy has been stymied by "special interests" and going on the attack to do whatever they like - fracking, uranium mining, clear-cutting, maybe a golf course on a provincial park. Throwing whatever natural asset we have into a wood chipper to catch the money coming out, but removing ways for the public to do anything about it.

So this isn't just Mabou. This is something that effects the whole province. If West Mabou Beach Provincial Park, a designated natural environmental park no less, can be handed over to scheming billionaires who are too cheap to buy their own land, then the entire province is up for grabs.

We are in Mi'kma'ki here, the land of Lnu, the Mi'kmaq. This is unceded land bound by treaties. And Canada was supposed to have transformed, through all the efforts of Truth and Reconciliation, into a country that respects this. But it does not.

In early September, Mi'kmaw protestors arrived at Hunters Mountain on Cape Breton, with concerns about the effects of clear cutting on this crown land, which is their land. They wanted joint management. The government did not oblige. Now, in late October, they are still there, their concerns being ignored by Tim Houston. Worse, a few weeks ago, the Nova Scotia government passed the omnibus bill 127. This bill includes amendments to the Crown Lands Act, that criminalize any activity that is harmful to economic interests, anything that impedes lawful use of Crown Lands by any person. The punishment is a 50 000 dollar fine, or six months in prison.

Many people saw this as an action meant to intimidate and put down Indigenous resistance like that at Hunters Mountain. I am one of those people. They had the gall to do this during Truth and Reconcilliation Day, the new holiday, which was September 30. The bill was introduced on September 23, debated, and passed on October 3rd.

It's disgusting.

I am with the Mi'kmaq of Hunters Mountain. I am with my community in West Mabou. I am with every Nova Scotian pushing back against this abuse of power.

I have been away for two weeks in October, doing book events in Calgary, Vancouver and Victoria. At every stop, I was on the mic about what is happening here. I had plans for comics and updates, and I must say, taking a community leadership role of a kind in all of this has been very consuming, and stressful. I'm just a cartoonist, I'm not Paul McCartney, but I recognize that I have a higher profile than some, and I want to do good with it. It is not often that something this significant comes to my back door, but if these feckless billionaires and politicians want to come here with their trouble, they better be ready to deal with the locals.

I'm hoping to get to Hunters Mountain this weekend, to see what's up and talk to people. They plan to be there for the long run. There is a facebook that has updates about where to send money for support, if you like. But for you and me, I just want to tell you that all your Patreon membership $ for this month is going to be added to anything that I donate to the Land Defenders of Hunters Mountain. So that will be from you, and from me.

I will keep you updated.

-Kate