Nova Scotia has been in a drought for almost five months now. Halifax Water has water conservation measures in place, including a mandatory restrictions for the Lake Major watershed, which includes Dartmouth, Burnside, Cole Harbour, Westphal, North Preston, and Eastern Passage.
On Monday, Halifax Water announced that since that mandatory restriction was put in place on Sept. 10, there’s been a 9% decline in overall water consumption.
I was thinking about water on Monday, specifically for people who live in rural communities and rely on wells.
There is one business sector that’s dealing with this drought on the ground level. That’s bulk water delivery companies. There are a few companies in Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) that get bulk refills at Halifax Water refill stations. The two refill stations in Dartmouth — Gloria McCluskey Bulk Water Station and Ragus Road Bulk Water Station — are now closed.
Tammie Isenor. Credit: Contributed
I made a few calls to water deliver companies and while a few were too busy to chat, I did speak with Tammie Isenor, owner of Maritime Clean and Care Ltd. in Carrolls Corner in East Hants. Isenor’s husband, son, and daughter help with deliveries and bookkeeping. The company delivers water to residential and commercial customers in East Hants and in Truro.
This year, however, they’ve expanded their service area when they can. While they have a usual fee for each truck of water, they’ve had to adjust prices to cover their costs for longer driving distances.
Isenor’s perspective on the drought and water in rural Nova Scotia is informative and important, so I wanted to share our interview here.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity:
Halifax Examiner (HE): When did business ramp up for you and how many deliveries do you make in a week?
Tammie Isenor (TI): Mid-June. We make an average of eight to 12 [deliveries] per day. We work seven days a week. We’ve had three days off since June. We just started last year, so this was our second summer.
HE: How does it compare to last summer?
TI: There is no comparison.
HE: Are you prioritizing who gets water? For example, if someone needs water for their well are they prioritized over someone who wants water for their pool?
TI: Yes, absolutely. Wells come first and cisterns [a tank for storing water]. We did prioritize wells over pool top-ups through the summer. Now we’re getting into hot tubs. We are still prioritizing wells over hot tubs. It’s still very much in demand.
HE: Where do you get your water from?
TI: We get it from the fill station in Enfield, so that is the Municipality of East Hants’ water supply. It is treated potable water. They put on a voluntary “watch your water” notice but they haven’t moved to a mandatory water restriction, yet. (On Oct. 7, East Hants announced it now has mandatory water restrictions).
A bulk water truck filling up at Halifax Water’s refill station in Bayers Lake on Oct. 7, 2025. Credit: Suzanne Rent
HE: The drought is still here. What do you think this signals about the future?
TI: I think it signals that global warming is very much a thing that we need to pay very close attention to. People are thinking differently about building new homes. People are suggesting cisterns over wells. One of the problems that is happening is that we’re putting water into dug wells, and the ground is absorbing the water. So, within 24 hours, it’s like they didn’t even get a delivery. Not only is it hard because we need to run our homes on water, but it’s very difficult for people financially who have never had to work this expense into their budget.
HE: What does it cost for a water deliver?
TI: A 1,500-gallon or 6,814 litres is $160. That’s what we charge. We’re all kind of ballpark. Unfortunately, what was happening through this summer is that there were some people who had utility trailers with totes [plastic bulk containers that holds liquid] and they add access to the refill station because everybody can get a fob to have access to that account. What was happening is [people who are not usually in the water delivery business were filling up and reselling], inflating the price. We never did that. It’s hard enough for people to be without water, let alone having to come up with that extra money.
There were people having to pay inflated prices, especially on the Eastern Shore. I’m still getting calls for down there. I’ve had calls as far as Cape Breton. I’ve had people offer me more money to come to Cape Breton. I said, “I’m so sorry, but I cannot go to Cape Breton.” I had a call from Guysborough County yesterday. There are not nearly enough water delivery companies in the outlying areas of rural Nova Scotia.
People really need this service this year. I actually went out and purchased a second truck just to try to meet the demand. It’s been a heck of a year. It pulls on your heartstrings because people are really struggling. I do give deals to people if they are struggling. It’s a hard business.
HE: Does East Hants have any water pick-ups for residents?
TI: They’re giving away water vouchers in Kennetcook and East Gore. Then you can go to the grocery store and pick up drinking water. I’ve heard from people who’ve not had a dry well in 50 years. People are used to conserving water in this area, which helps, but people are using the water in their dehumidifiers to flush their toilet. There are lot of different ways that people have become resourceful.
The other piece of the puzzle is that we’ve had people selling the 1,100-litre totes. What we’re doing is filling the totes, if they have them, and then putting the rest in the well, so they can conserve some of the water from soaking into the ground. Again, people have inflated the prices [of totes] because of the demand.
A bulk water truck filling up at Halifax Water’s refill station in Bayers Lake on Oct. 7, 2025. Credit: Suzanne Rent
HE: What is your advice for people while we wait for rain?
TI: My advice to people who have wells is to conserve your water as much as you can, even if you think you have enough water. Monitor the well’s level because we don’t want emergency calls like they have children or an elderly person they are caring for, and they have no water. This year, we just can’t deliver the same day. Right now, I am booking out to Saturday. In the summer, I was booked solid for six weeks in advance.
It’s hard because you don’t want to say no to people. Let us know a couple days ahead so we can get to you before you run out.
There’s really no significant amount of rain in the forecast. We are going to need a significant amount of rain that falls nice and lightly onto the ground so that it can absorb and not run off and before the ground freezes. We’ve already been preparing one of our trucks to run all winter because we anticipate that we will be running all winter.
A lot of people have really pulled together as a community and tried to help one another. Everybody has to stick together and help their neighbours until it rains.
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NOTICED
Survey on violence and harassment in politics
Municipal polling station sign outside Sackville High School in Lower Sackville on Oct. 19, 2024. Credit: Yvette d’Entremont
The Violence & Harassment in Politics (VHIP) Working Group has this new survey about violence and harassment in politics in Atlantic Canada.
The idea for the working group was inspired by a conversation started by Coun. Kacy Delong with the Municipality of the District of Lunenburg (MODL) during an event for International Women’s Day in 2024.
The group is part of the Scaling the Summit project organized by Be the Peace Institute. The working group is funded by the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women.
According to a press release I received from Be the Peace on Tuesday, the group’s goal is to “raise awareness about sexual harassment, misogyny and racism in politics and develop and share strategies for public action.”
The survey is open to:
current or former elected official or candidate
a volunteer/staffer
a potential candidate (you would like to or have considered running)
or a partner/spouse/family member of any of the above
The Be the Peace Institute also has videos from a three-part panel series it hosted on violence and harassment in politics. You can watch that series here.
The survey is open until Nov. 30. Find the survey here.
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RECENTLY IN THE HALIFAX EXAMINER:
1. ‘Daniel Sampson was innocent’: leading lawyers and law organizations in Canada call for executed man to be exonerated
Daniel Sampson. Credit: Libraries and Archives Canada
Tim Bousquet reports:
Some of the leading lawyers and law organizations in Canada, as well as other academic luminaries, have sent federal Justice Minister Sean Fraser open letters urging him to grant an appeal in the case of Daniel Sampson.
As I explained Monday, Sampson was the last person executed in Halifax, on March 7, 1935. My investigation of the Sampson case lays out the incontrovertible truth that Sampson was an innocent man framed by the RCMP, and then murdered by the state.
In March, lawyer David Steeves filed an Application for Ministerial Review with Fraser on behalf of Lance Sampson, Daniel Sampson’s great-great-grandson. Lance Sampson is the musician who goes by the stage name Aquakultre.
The review of the Daniel Sampson case is now with the Criminal Conviction Review Group, the team of Justice Department lawyers charged with assessing such applications.
Should Fraser grant the appeal, the case will return to the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal, where it will be all but certain that Sampson’s conviction will be overturned. In that inevitability, Daniel Sampson will be both the oldest wrongful conviction overturned and the only executed person to be exonerated in Canadian history.
One of the writers in the open letter is George Elliot Clarke, who shared this:
For nearly a century, Mr. Sampson’s survivors and descendants have had to shoulder an unbearable burden of unmerited guilt and humiliation for the reckless and racist apportioning of blame to a Great War veteran for the grevious deaths of two young boys — Edward and Bramwell Heffernan in Halifax, NS, in 1933 — who may never have been the victims of a decided homicide, but rather of a tragic, railway accident.
You can read Bousquet’s investigative series, Nova Scotia Policing Panic here.
Click or tap here to read “‘Daniel Sampson was innocent’: leading lawyers and law organizations in Canada call for executed man to be exonerated.”
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2. Dartmouth non-profit protects affordable rents for 200 households
The apartment building at 4 Franklyn Court has been purchased by Rooted, a non-profit housing agency. Credit: Jennifer Henderson
Jennifer Henderson reports:
Two hundred households paying well below market rent in north end Dartmouth and in Truro will not experience renoviction thanks to a recent purchase by a community group that has received substantial money from the province.
The deal is the latest example of two innovative programs where the province pays the downpayment to buy existing apartment buildings and then loans a pre-qualified housing group the money to acquire the mortgages.
The province is providing “Rooted” — a non-profit organization that has existed for 40 years and grew out of the former city of Dartmouth housing agency — with more than $6.8 million in grants and loans to buy six older apartment buildings where rents are well below market rates.
Three of the properties are in north end Dartmouth — at 19 Primrose Street and 2 and 4 Franklyn Court. The Franklyn Court buildings contain 132 units where a studio rents for $892 a month, a one-bedroom apartment for $902, and a 2-bedroom for $927.
Rooted also bought three smaller buildings in Truro at 18 and 28 Minerva Drive and 16 Park Street from Vida Living.
This is good news but as Henderson writes the wait list for housing is now at 7,000 people, half of whom are seniors.
Click or tap here to read “Dartmouth non-profit protects affordable rents for 200 households.”
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3. District 8 town hall
Mayor Andy Fillmore and Coun. Virginia Hinch at the town hall in Hinch’s District 8 on Oct. 7, 2025. Credit: Suzanne Rent
Last night, I went to the town hall in District 8 that was hosted by Coun. Virginia Hinch and Mayor Andy Fillmore. The event was hosted in a much-too-small room in the Needham Community Centre.
There were a few big issues on people’s minds, including development on the peninsula, particularly the lack of affordable housing and the growth of high-rise buildings.
One of Hinch’s election promises was to save Centennial Pool. She had a lot of supporters last night, including Trevor Brumwell, chair of the Save Centennial Pool committee.
As for housing, one speaker named Rebecca asked Fillmore for his definition of responsible development. He almost refused to answer her question when she said he’s in “developers’ pockets.”
Another speaker said Halifax would become like Manhattan in 20 years, and said this: “The very rich and elite will live on the peninsula. Everybody else will live everywhere else.”
This is the fourth town hall I’ve reported on. Fillmore said last night there was a fifth and I don’t know where that one took place. Some of the speakers last night talked about how there is little communication on these town halls. I’ve read similar concerns online.
The only posts I’ve seen have been on Fillmore’s Facebook page, so I check in there often. I asked his staff to keep me posted. While they said they would, I never got any heads-up at more town halls.
Nonetheless, I will attend more when they happen.
Also, all of the councillors have their own way of communicating with constituents, but it would be nice if there was one page to visit where we can find newsletters of councillors who publish newsletters.
Click or tap here to read “District 8 residents talk development, Centennial Pool at town hall with Virginia Hinch, Andy Fillmore.”
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4. ‘We’re here for good’: Mi’kmaw land defenders say they’re not leaving Hunter’s Mountain
Sign at the entrance road to Hunter’s Mountain, where Mi’kmaw land defenders have set up an encampment with tents, trailers, cabins, a teepee and sacred fire, a long house, which they say is permanent. This photo was taken on October 6, 2025. Credit: Joan Baxter
Joan Baxter reports on the latest from Hunter’s Mountain (Tqamuoweye’katik):
Mi’kmaw grandmother, Giju Madonna Bernard, is adamant. She has no intention of leaving the encampment that Mi’kmaw land defenders have set up over the past month to protect Hunter’s Mountain (Tqamuoweye’katik) in eastern Cape Breton.
Asked if she thinks the recent omnibus Bill 127, “Protecting Nova Scotians Act,” which gave the province the authority to remove without notice anyone impeding logging operations on Crown land and to issue fines of $50,000 and/or six months in prison, was intended to criminalize the Mi’kmaw camp at Hunter’s Mountain, Bernard replies, “Oh my god, 110%!”
“That’s straight-on racism, discrimination, whatever you want to call it. That’s straight-on, full-force proud-boy mentality, old gentlemen’s club mentality,” says Bernard.
And if Premier Tim Houston’s government decided to send in officers to try to remove the encampment, given the recent passing of Bill 127?
“We’re staying, we’re not leaving, we’re not going anywhere,” Bernard replies. “They can try to come at us with their guns and their injunctions and whatever they wanna do, but we’re not leaving.”
Click or tap here to read “‘We’re here for good’: Mi’kmaw land defenders say they’re not leaving Hunter’s Mountain.”
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5. Public can now comment on amended planning documents for Halifax
Halifax City Hall on Aug. 19, 2025. Credit: Suzanne Rent
I reported on Wednesday:
People across Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) can now have its say on the updated minimum planning requirement documents. Councillors got the staff report Friday, after a surprise announcement about a new planning process from the province last week.
As we reported on Friday, Municipal Affairs Minister John Lohr introduced a new planning process that makes HRM an interim planning area and adds nine suburban opportunity sites.
Councillors didn’t hear about that new plan until Friday afternoon. As Lohr told reporters, including Jennifer Henderson, at Province House much of the new plan is not new at all, but rather copied from the regional plan.
The Houston government rejected the regional plan in August and expressed concerns about requirements for 30-metre setbacks from watercourses, and requirements for chargers for electric vehicles (EVs) in all new homes and apartments.
At council’s meeting on Tuesday, municipal planning staff gave this presentation on this staff report with the updates to the minimum planning requirements. That report also includes a letter from the Urban Development Institute (UDI) with a list of its recommendations for the regional plan.
Click or tap here to read “Public can now comment on amended planning documents for Halifax.”
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IN OTHER NEWS
Bridge tolls
The toll plaza at the MacKay Bridge. Credit: Suzanne Rent
On Monday, I wrote this story with some data I obtained on traffic and collisions on the Halifax Harbour Bridges more than six months after the tolls the toll plazas were removed.
As the story said, there is a 10% increase in traffic volume and a 40% decline in collisions.
Preston Mulligan at CBC has this story on the new data, specifically around the decline in collisions. Most of the collisions were taking place at the toll plazas. There are no more plazas to hit or get stuck in, so that makes sense.
But Mulligan talked to Neil Webster, the manager of OK Tire on Lady Hammond Road, just at the approach to the MacKay Bridge, said there are still long waits and collisions in that area.
Jonathan MacInnis at CTV has this story on the data, too. He got a comment from Public Works Minister Fred Tilley, who said fewer collisions is what they predicted when Premier Tim Houston promised in his election campaign last fall to remove the tolls.
“The reduction in collisions is very much a positive. Anytime we can reduce collisions on our roads and highways is a positive thing for Nova Scotians,” Tilley said.
Jennifer Henderson had this story on Houston’s announcement where he said removing the tolls was about affordability and reducing congestion. Here’s what he said:
The bridge tolls are nothing more than a tax on getting to work or getting home to see your family. I was told this would cost $40 million in government revenue. I prefer to think of it as both a $40 million tax cut for Nova Scotia drivers and a $40 million investment in reducing traffic congestion.
Halifax Harbour Bridges told me one of the reasons for the 10% increase in traffic may be the order to return to the office. Now, Houston doesn’t like people working from home, which would actually reduce congestion and be better for families.
Also, Halifax Harbour Bridges was planning on moving to an electronic toll system. That would have kept the revenue coming in from tolls while also reducing collisions into the plazas.
You know what? The drive over the bridges is a bit smoother but that doesn’t mean it’s better overall. The collisions are still happening and there is more traffic.
Tim Rissesco, CEO of the Downtown Dartmouth Business Commission, told MacInnis at CTV he wants to see the ferries be free. This is a good idea.
On Tuesday after leaving City Hall, I took the bus home, the express route 136. When it got to the Windsor Street Exchange, I said, “ugh” as I saw all of the cars ahead of us. Yet, the bus driver just zipped through traffic. The commute was about 15 minutes from Scotia Square to my house.
Had I been in my car I would have sat in my car much longer. When you’re on the bus, you realize it’s cars that cause congestion, not toll removal, not bike lanes. It’s cars.
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Government
City
Appeals Standing Committee (Thursday, 10am, City Hall) — agenda
African Descent Advisory Committee (Thursday, 6pm, HEMDCC Meeting Space and online) — agenda
Province
No meetings
On campus
Dalhousie
Group Read – Reclaiming Power + Place: The Final Report (Thursday, 12pm, Indigenous Student Centre and online) — details
Update on the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA) (Thursday, 12pm, online) — details
King’s
Leibniz, Kant and German Political Thought (Thursday, 7:30pm, Archibald Room) — Douglas Moggach from the University of Ottawa will talk
Literary Events
Thursday
Book launch (Thursday, 6pm, St. Mary’s Boat Club) — Renée Hartleib’s Solo Camino: An Empowering Guide for Women
Friday
No events
Weekend
The Fantastic Grown-up Book Fair (Saturday, 10am, Mahone Bay Centre) — local authors, small presses and book-related merchandise vendors
Booktoberfest (Saturday, 11am, Halifax Central Library) — featuring 31 vendor tables, 66 Nova Scotian authors, and 7 Nova Scotian publishers
Booktoberfest: Author readings (Saturday, 11:30am, Central Library) — details
Autumn Book Swap (Sunday, 11am, Open Book Coffee) — details
Head On: A Poetry Reading (Sunday, 2pm, Halifax Central Library) — with Kathy Mac
In the harbour
Halifax
06:00: Enchanted Princess, cruise ship with 4,402 passengers, arrives at Pier 22 from Portland, on a seven-day roundtrip cruise out of New York
08:30: Brilliance of the Seas, cruise ship with up to 2,580 passengers, arrives at Pier 20 from Saint John, on a seven-day roundtrip cruise out of Boston
10:00: MSC Kim, container ship, sails from Pier 42 for sea
11:30: Saimaagracht, heavy lifter, arrives at Pier 9 from Belfast, Northern Ireland
11:30: Skogafoss, container ship, arrives at Pier 41 from Portland
12:00: Lars D, container ship, arrives at Pier 42 from Mariel, Cuba
15:30: CMA CGM Moliere, container ship, arrives at Pier 41 from Bremerhaven, Germany
16:30: Saimaagracht sails for sea
16:30: Oceanex Sanderling, ro-ro container, moves from Autoport to Fairview Cove
16:30: Enchanted Princess sails for New York
17:30: Skogafoss sails for Reykjavik
18:00: Brilliance of the Seas sails for Sydney
Cape Breton
08:30: Insignia, cruise ship with up to 800 passengers, arrives at Government Wharf (Sydney) from Halifax, on an 11-day cruise from Boston to Montréal
17:30: Insignia sails for Corner Brook
Footnotes
This dumpster is all of us: Faded, worn, rusty, banged around, and stuck in a corner, but still trying to regroup and enjoy life.
An inspiring dumpster in Fairview on Oct. 7, 2025. Credit: Suzanne Rent