A Line is Being Crossed

Letter submitted by Kate Beaton The Inverness Oran - October 8, 2025 Originally published here

Dear Editor,  

This is a letter about Cabot’s designs on the West Mabou Beach Provincial Park. To start off, I’m one of those against a golf course being built there. I think a line is being crossed.    I was on a local committee in 2022 when a group of Mabou organizations were offered money privately by Cabot. At that time, we were told that it was only if we publicly supported the golf course. This was before their plans where they called it “annual funding” were released publicly. I remember it as a very uncomfortable proposition, and organizations turned it down on principle, but that was just the start.  The last time Cabot did this, they did it by approaching the community in this way – informally. Throwing their weight around. They never submitted an actual proposal to the provincial government, but they let their intentions be known. My guess is that they were hoping that unilateral community support would force the government to hand over protected land, but that is not what happened. What happened, instead, was that we all had to watch our community divide itself, and attack each other, for or against, over this imaginary golf course with almost no actual information at hand. No one with any power to move the dial did anything to help ameliorate the situation. The local politicians didn’t want to touch it. They either said nothing, or they said things that meant nothing. Cabot never did make the proposal official, so the provincial government had nothing to respond to on the record. And Cabot itself was nowhere around to talk to us or make comment, the only person we got to hear from was a hired spokesperson, which was unfair even to them really, to have to assume the entire face of Cabot during all this turmoil, in their own community. You hated to open up The Inverness Oran every week, to the vitriol on the pages. It was as though Cabot threw this idea into the gladiator ring to see if their side could beat the other side to death, and it was awful to watch people go at each other over something that in the end, they had no say in anyway. It was not a dialogue. It was a bloodsport and sowing division felt intentional.     Here we are again, we’re supposed to get back in the ring, and where is the information? Granted, we are talking about this now because a journalist looked into what’s happening, not because we are on Cabot’s timeline. But I can’t say I have faith that we will be presented with anything worth looking at when Cabot makes a formal bid. I anticipate only the same unserious projections, the same lines about jobs and benefits without ever analyzing what they will be. Then all we are left with to determine this is people saying “look at Inverness,” but where is the independent economic impact study on the community of Inverness, I don’t have one. No one actually knows anything substantial. Jobs, money, housing, taxes, water, etc – there are no real statistics anywhere, unless you count what is on Cabot’s website. Based on what seems to have been happening behind the scenes, maybe we won’t be presented with anything but a done deal, I don’t know. So, I should walk one of those statements back a little. I said “we’re supposed to get back in the ring,” but it looks like Cabot has been working with the government behind closed doors, since going through the community didn’t work last time. It’s clear from the October 3rd CBC article that things have been happening, that “conversations” have already been happening. The same Houston government that drew a hard line in 2023 is waffling in their statements. The deceit of it is distasteful. There are already staked markers from the Department of Natural Resources on the beach. Cabot can say, as they did back then, that they are just gauging interest, but the website for this specific golf course is up as though it was a reality. On that website, it says, “Cabot is committed to being a good neighbour.” Well, their conduct on this so far does not really indicate to me that they are for the well-being of the community. It’s worth saying, or shouting one more time for the people in the back, that the community is not against a golf course in Mabou. When it comes to West Mabou Beach Provincial Park, dissenters are often maligned as people who hate progress. But what people are against is a golf course on protected public land, the leasing of a natural resource provincial park to a corporation who can talk about environmental stewardship all they want, but at the end of the day are a corporation who are literally trying to build a golf course on sand dunes. They are beholden to shareholders, not the community. And they keep coming back to this piece of land instead of buying private land like everyone else has to. Something always strikes me when this happens. There is a tragic irony in the way that every time some business/corporation approaches West Mabou looking to develop it commercially because it’s perfect for their vision, the people who are forced to campaign to stop it are the main cause of it looking so good to those corporations in the first place. They are the reason West Mabou Beach looks so appealing. They’ve fought for it. This could have all been private land, and 42 years ago, it was. It could be covered in summer cottages with No Trespassing signs, but it’s not, because in 1983 it was set aside and protected. And in 1987, 1999, 2018 and 2022, different businesses have attempted to seize it for business interests, met with opposition, and were overruled. Somehow, though, a company can still act like West Mabou is a cake that just came out of the oven for them. Like it’s just been sitting there waiting for them all this time, or it didn’t exist before their interest. But no. Listen: it’s perfect for what you want because it has been protected. It feels magical, because it has been protected. It is unceded Mi’kmaw land, have they ever been approached in these past six years of golf speculation? And it is our land, the public. Protected land is supposed to be protected, but in Nova Scotia, you can still buy your way in under the guise of economic salvation. I’m not seeing much transparency from these saviours, though. The provincial government needs to step in and make rules about protected land clearer, so that people in the community aren’t forced to put themselves in the line of fire every time. I guess we have to dust off the old “Save West Mabou Beach Provincial Park” signs. But it shouldn’t be this way. You know, private land isn’t impossible to buy. People do it every day. And if Cabot can’t find land to buy here, well, they’d be the first billionaires who couldn’t. Sincerely, Kate Beaton Mabou