Clashing personalities, a community in transition, competing developments… a perfect storm is brewing in picture-perfect Peggys Cove

We’ll begin our tour of Peggys Cove–Nova Scotia’s combination postcard-perfect lighthouse, traditional fishing village and world-renowned tourist attraction—at the spot where such tours often begin: the tip of the recently completed $3.1-million public boardwalk and viewing deck.

The view is spectacular—iconic Peggys Point lighthouse, maybe the most photographed in the world, thrusting skyward out of gigantic heaving granite boulders. Beyond them, the ominous blue-black of the Atlantic Ocean stretching out to forever beneath a hovering slate grey sky.

On this relatively calm late September day, gaggles of tourists, some from cruise-ship bus tours, cavort on the rocks, heedless of the red and orange DANGER signs— “Death Has Occurred Here… Don’t Take Risks… Leave Here Alive”—taking selfies and/or simply staring into the crashing waves, pondering the always capricious, ever-dangerous whims of Mother Nature.

Mother Nature, some residents will tell you, isn’t the only capricious force at work in this cove.

Turn back to your left, and you’ll see the almost as iconic Sou’Wester Restaurant and Gift Shop at 178 Peggys Point Road. What began nearly 60 years ago as a five-table tearoom is now a 180-seat restaurant featuring a sea-caught menu of Maritime delights from fish chowder to boiled lobster. The elongated, two-storey, dormer-roofed, grey-like-the-sky building that houses the restaurant also boasts a two-level gift shop with “one of the Maritimes’ largest selections of giftware.” Many of this year’s nearly three-quarters-of-a-million tourists to the Cove will almost certainly begin or end their visit with a stop at the Sou’Wester.

The Sou’Wester, unusual for such a venerable tourism business, is still run by the family of its founder, Jack Campbell. Remember the Campbell name. It won’t be the last time you hear it.

What is interesting about all these businesses is that they don’t appear to be operating in accordance with existing official local zoning bylaws that govern home-based businesses.

 

If you turn even further to your left, you’ll see two large houses on opposite sides of the circular drive that leads past the Sou’Wester and the entrance to the huge car and tour bus parking lot behind it. The bright aqua building to your left is Amos Pewter, a jewelry and gift shop. To your right, the purple building houses Tom’s Lobster Shack, a more recent addition to Cove culinary commerce. Above the restaurant, there is a bed and breakfast called Cozy Cove Studio. Its Airbnb host is listed as Nicole Campbell. The building that houses both those businesses is owned by John Campbell, son of Jack, father of Nicole, who is also the current president and operator of the Sou’wester. Until recently, John also owned the building where Amos Pewter operates. What is interesting about all these businesses is that they don’t appear to be operating in accordance with existing official local zoning bylaws that govern home-based businesses.

Non-compliant? Existing bylaws? The Peggys Cove Land Use Bylaw dates back to 1993. Under its rules, only certain home-based businesses are allowed in the residential zone, which occupies most of the land area in Peggys Cove. While the allowable home businesses include craft workshops, fishing-related home businesses, tailoring and dressmaking, restaurants are not one of those legal home-based businesses. No home-based business is supposed to occupy more than 25 per cent of the total floor space either. Bed and breakfasts are allowed in the residential zone, but they’re limited to four units and are required to operate out of a residence occupied by the operator of the B&B.

Let’s continue our tour. We’ll head down the road to the left of Amos Pewter. On the water side of the street, you’ll see a 17,000-square-foot oceanfront clump of rock, grass and scrub bush on which sits a weathered, down-at-the-heels, paint-peeling building and shed. At one point, 173 Peggys Point Road—which some claim boasts the oldest building in the Cove—was registered as a guest house. More recently, it was home to an artist co-op called Hags on the Hill. But that moved a few years back, and no one has lived here for 25 years.

The property is now owned by Kelly Westhaver and her husband, Brian Cottam. They inherited it after Kelly’s mother died in 2021. In the spring of 2023, Kelly and Brian, who are both disabled and living on investments, “reluctantly” decided to sell the property, despite their “sentimental attachment” to it, so they could have “enough to retire on.” They hired a real estate agent.

On April 12, 2023, he put the property on the market for $1.2 million.

 

 

Let’s pause here. Because it’s going to get complicated, and there’s some context you need to understand so you can understand the rest.

In 2019, Develop Nova Scotia, a provincial agency, set about creating a comprehensive master plan for the future of Peggys Cove, the unique coastal district on Nova Scotia’s St. Margarets Bay that “exemplifies the quintessential Nova Scotia that visitors love, and residents cherish.” But as the master planners also noted in setting out their task: “Peggys Cove is a living community first—an active fishing village and home to year-round residents.”

The challenge, it said, was to balance the needs and desires of that real-life community—which now actually numbers fewer than 40 full-time residents, fewer than half a dozen of whom fish for a living—with the needs and expectations of the 700,000-plus tourists a year from all over the world who spill on to its narrow roadways, overfill its limited facilities and stress its infrastructure.

While the community-consulted master plan did offer some important direction (such as road improvements, extra parking, accessible public washrooms and that new marquee boardwalk), it couldn’t come to grips with one of the key issues residents themselves had identified. How should future land use in the Cove be governed “to support continued community sustainability and opportunities for inclusive economic growth and participation?”

That’s because Develop Nova Scotia wasn’t in charge of that aspect of Peggys Cove’s future. The loftily named provincial Department of Inclusive Economic Growth is. Predicted the ever-optimistic master plan, that department was “expected to carry out a formal review [of Peggys Cove governance] in 2021.”

But now—which is to say, at the end of 2023 —what still governs development in and around the 2,000-acre preservation zone surrounding the village of Peggys Cove is the bedrock Peggys Cove Commission Act of 1962. It established the Peggys Cove Commission, which, according to its website, “makes planning and development decisions according to land use bylaws… The individuals who make up the commission,” its self-description adds, “are experienced leaders of this unique area, and will strike a balance between preserving our heritage and creating a welcoming place for residents and visitors alike.”

More prosaically, the act says the commission will be made up of three ex-officio members (the district’s municipal councillor and representatives from the province’s development and planning departments) and four provincially-appointed public members, “three of whom shall be residents of the area.”

But wait a minute. There are, as we noted earlier, fewer than 40 full-time residents in Peggys Cove. How—in a tiny, traditional Nova Scotia community where everyone seems to be related to everyone else—do you find three commissioners who don’t have some conflict of interest when it comes to figuring out who gets to do what with their land?

The short answer is, you don’t.

In May 2023, in fact, Pamela Lovelace, the ex-officio municipal councillor on the commission, became so frustrated with the situation—and the commission’s lack of transparency—that she resigned. “The commission is intentionally designed by the province in a way that creates conflict in this small community,” she argued, “because the individuals who are on the commission, who live in the community, are making decisions about their neighbours’ properties.” To make matters worse, she added, the locals on the commission “know absolutely nothing about land use planning.”

The provincial deputy minister responsible for the Peggys Cove Commission responded in a public letter to its chair, declaring that the province was not investigating the operations of the commission and adding, “I would like to extend our sincere appreciation for your continuing leadership…”

The minister in charge said it was up to the community to figure things out. To do otherwise, she said, would constitute “ministerial overreach.”

But let’s take a closer look at the three local resident members of the commission. The chair is Nicole Campbell, who is, as we mentioned, John Campbell’s daughter. You may remember that she operates a bylaw-non-conforming bed and breakfast in a building owned by her father. Her official bio notes that “she has worked at the family business, The Sou’Wester Gift & Restaurant, since her early teens and currently works as the dining room manager.” (I tried to reach Campbell, but she didn’t respond to numerous requests for an interview.)

 

 

Commissioner Judy Dauphinee is John Campbell’s step-mother. She too works at the Sou’wester. The third local commissioner, Maria Bartholomew, is a registered counselling therapist who has run her own bed and breakfast from her property in the Cove, though she doesn’t live there full-time, meaning it too is non-compliant with the existing bylaw.

The commission’s role—always critical to setting the parameters of what other residents can and can’t do with their land—became even more crucial in the fall of 2022. That’s when the commission embarked on a review of the existing 20-year-old land use bylaw and began fiddling with which zones—residential, core (commercial), fishing, conservation and service—fit where in the Cove.

Over the past year, the commission has held several public hearings during which everyone could make their “public comments and objections” about the latest version of the land use plan to the commissioners. The commissioners invariably listened politely but generally didn’t respond. Later, the commission met behind closed doors and made decisions. Although their meeting minutes were later published, and any conflicts of interest noted—“Commissioners Campbell and Dauphinee declare a conflict with any discussion on 154 Peggy’s Point Road [Tom’s Lobster Shack]”—the minutes didn’t explain the why of what was decided. Or re-decided. And re-decided again.

Since the latest review began a little over a year ago, in fact, there have been five different iterations of the zoning map, with properties once designated residential suddenly showing up on the map as core with no detailed explanation of why, only to be changed back to residential in the next version with even fewer reasons given. And vice versa.

 

To put it into perspective there is only one way in to view the lighthouse and that is directly past the front door of this property. Eight hundred thousand people staring in your windows! Living at this address would be intolerable. Who in their right mind wants to live in the middle of a theme park?”

—Tim Harris, Westhaver/Cottam property real estate agent

 

And that brings us all the way back to the Westhaver/Cottam property at 173 Peggys Point Road. In the first version of the land use map in October 2022, the small section where the dilapidated buildings were standing had been designated core while the rest of the property was zoned residential.

Residential?

“To put it into perspective,” the couple’s real estate agent, Tim Harris, would tell one public hearing, “there is only one way in to view the lighthouse and that is directly past the front door of this property. Eight hundred thousand people staring in your windows! Living at this address would be intolerable. Who in their right mind wants to live in the middle of a theme park?”

When the map was revised in April 2023, however, the commissioners had, without explanation, re-designated the Westhaver/Cottam property as core, which was when the couple put it up for sale.

In June, it sold for $1.8 million, $600,000 over the initial asking price. Though the names of the actual buyers weren’t publicly revealed at the time, they included Scott Linkletter, the owner of Prince Edward Island-based COWS Ice Cream, which has outlets across Canada, and Chris Cudmore, the co-owner of Coastal Culture, which bills itself as Prince Edward Island’s “#1 Souvenir Store.”

Officially, Kelly Westhaver recalls, the two bought the property under the name of Stamper Inc., Cudmore’s commercial real estate company. “And ‘assigns,’” she adds. “What we figured out after is that ‘assigns’ meant they could assign any buyers after that.”

Such as John Campbell? According to Cottam, John Campbell had already offered to buy the property for $800,000, but that had been rejected.

“My mother always said she would never sell the property to John Campbell,” Kelly Westhaver tells me.
Why not?

“Because he was king of Peggys Cove. He bought up everything else. So, she just didn’t want him to own the property.”

We’ll come back to that too.

As of June 14, 2023, Westhaver and Cottam had what they thought was a signed-and-sealed agreement to sell their property, contingent, of course, on the property continuing to be designated core so the buyers could launch commercial businesses on it.

Signed, sealed, but not, it turned out, quite delivered.

In early September, Cottam and Westhaver learned from their real estate agent that the commission had suddenly re-reversed course and decided their property, including the dwellings, should be re-designated back to residential.

The sale was on hold. The value of their property tumbled.

What happened? There was no explanation. But there was a lot of speculation. And consternation. And not just about 173 Peggys Point Road.

 

Paul Paruch laughingly describes himself as “the longest-standing new resident of Peggys Cove,” although he doesn’t live there full-time. He and his wife, Claire, bought a hillside property on Rocky Road in the village in 2010, partly because it included waterfrontage and “had fantastic views from every angle” and partly because they were looking for “something to do in our retirement” when that time came.

Paul is a credit union executive; Claire spent 25 years in the airline business. Although their property was zoned residential, Paruch says he hoped Claire, who is a “very good artist” with an entrepreneurial flair, might eventually be able to sell some of her art from a stand at the end of their property.

But nothing went as they planned or hoped. The morning after their first night in their new house, Paul began a major renovation by “pulling the bathroom apart.” He laughs, remembers what was to become a two-year project. “The bathroom is the wrong room to begin a renovation,” he says. “Renovate the bathroom last!”

But that wasn’t his biggest concern that day. “One of the neighbours comes over, knocks on the door. We invite her in. Awesome. First neighbour. ‘How you doing?’” But after five minutes of “niceties,” the woman informed Paruch he didn’t have deeded access to the lane he needed to use to reach his new house. Paruch countered that he did. “One of the biggest things of concern for me before I bought here had been how to access the property.” His lawyers assured him it came with the property. “I said, why don’t you give me your lawyer’s contact information? I’ll pass it on to my lawyer and they can talk.”

That didn’t work out. Today—13 years later—the neighbourhood property dispute has expanded and escalated. “The RCMP have been out two or three times.” Paruch says he doesn’t feel safe in his own house.

Their entrepreneurial dreams didn’t fare any better. During the consultation process for the Peggys Cove master plan, Develop Nova Scotia’s consultants “asked us, ‘What’s your dream for your property?’… I said, ‘It would be for Claire and me to live in the house and work a little restaurant business at the end of our property.’”

Later, when Develop Nova Scotia realized it had miscalculated the extent of wetlands that would have to be disturbed to build public washrooms at the new visitor information centre next to the Paruch property, officials asked the Paruchs if they could locate the washroom adjacent to their property line. Paul wasn’t keen, “but then they said, ‘Well, hold on. Your dream is to have a restaurant. One of the things that’s going to hold you up is access to washrooms.’” Their new small business, the officials suggested, could piggyback on the new community washroom and use it as their own, an approach that had been successfully piloted on the Halifax waterfront. “You’ll never be able to afford to build the washrooms that we’re building here. It’s a great approach where public investment will help private investment.” In fact, the master plan specifically “encouraged” the development of a “business area” near the Paruchs, “served by the public washroom.”

Although Paruch says he wasn’t happy with the resulting construction disruption in and around his property, “We said, we’ll stay focused on the prize.” That prize, of course, was getting the Peggys Cove Commission to change the land use bylaw during the review process to allow for commercial businesses on the portion of their property adjacent to those new public washrooms.

They’d already run into problems because of their residential zoning. In 2021, the Peggys Cove Commission ordered them to “cease immediately” operating Claire’s small pop-up art vending cart at the foot of their property. (They did, though it didn’t escape their notice that others in the cove were operating businesses on their residential properties that didn’t comply with the bylaws either.)

But in the first revisions to the zoning map in the winter of 2023, the commission rezoned a strip of land at the bottom of their property from residential to core just as they’d hoped.

By the end of the summer, however the map had been redrawn again, and this time their entire property was again listed as residential—with no explanation.

 

“This project isn’t about me. It isn’t about us. It’s about Peggys Cove. It’s about their story. It’s something that moves us emotionally to do this project because we think it’s a beautiful story.”

—Eleanor McCain

 

Eleanor McCain describes herself as a “very proud Maritimer. My mother,” she explained in October 2023 at a Peggys Cove Commission public hearing to consider the latest zoning map, “was raised in Truro and my father was raised in Florenceville, New Brunswick, a small community of 800 people…”

McCain? Florenceville? Those McCains? Yes.

“It is easy to get distracted by my family name,” McCain acknowledged, “and the business my father built from nothing. But the fact is, like you, I am an east coaster raised in a small community with rural values.”

More than a decade ago, McCain purchased property near her mother’s summer place in Hacketts Cove on St. Margarets Bay, about 10 km from Peggys Cove. “It was a beautiful spot and right on the ocean.”

A few years later, she got into a public spat with her neighbours after she banned residents from crossing her property to get to a local public beach. She claimed they were trespassing and vandalizing the property “at all times of the day without regard.” The conflict was finally settled in court in 2019; McCain won.

Though she may be an east coaster with rural values, it was also clear Eleanor McCain was not one to be trifled with.

McCain says her interest in Peggys Cove, and its myriad commercial and cultural possibilities is longstanding. Whenever she and her daughter Laura spent time around St. Margarets Bay, she says, they would stop by the Little Red Schoolhouse—a one-time school turned community gathering space in Peggys Cove—to take in The Peggy Show, a comedic take on the community’s history created by local actor John Beale. “I think we were his best customer,” she jokes. “We’d go three or four times a week.” She and her daughter even bought the show’s video, and “we knew all the lines.”

By the time of the COVID lockdown in the winter of 2021, the Little Red Schoolhouse and a cluster of five other historic commercial and residential buildings in the middle of Peggys Cove were already on the market. “I kept driving down and looking at them and getting intrigued,” McCain recalls. She and her husband, Paul Hansen, “spent a lot of time looking at websites, looking at retailers and seeing what was possible.”

Given that the lighthouse’s boardwalk and viewing deck were nearing completion and infrastructure projects were underway as part of implementing the master plan, the timing seemed “like it was meant to be.”

They bought the two properties and six buildings for $1.6 million. The ultimate intention with what they called “Six by the Sea”—a proposed development featuring “a tasteful retail shop of local artisans, a restaurant, event space and a gallery”—was “to reinvest all proceeds from these businesses back into the community, through initiatives and programs.” McCain hasn’t asked for government funding for her projects.

“This project isn’t about me. It isn’t about us,” McCain insisted to the CBC at the time. “It’s about Peggys Cove. It’s about their story. It’s something that moves us emotionally to do this project because we think it’s a beautiful story.”

Although only one of the buildings she acquired was zoned commercial, the master plan did envision the remaining buildings would also be included in the core zone under the updated land use bylaw. And the zoning map—in all its various versions—designated them as core.

So, McCain opened Holy Mackerel, a “whimsical Maritime emporium” in the already commercially zoned building and then applied to the Peggys Cove Commission for a bylaw amendment to allow the other businesses to operate while the rest of the zoning revision process unfolded.

The commission responded with a flat no. Despite a letter from the provincial deputy minister stating that until new bylaws were approved, the commission should follow the existing land use bylaw rezoning process, the commission declared it would only consider rezoning based on the not-yet-passed revised bylaw. As Nicole Campbell, the chair, explained in a letter to McCain, agreeing to her rezoning application under the existing bylaw “would send the wrong message.”

The message McCain says she received was that “there are two ways of doing things in Peggys Cove. Ignore the bylaws and open your business anyway or follow them and get shut down or stonewalled.” Oh, and the commission treats some businesses differently than others, she adds. Reminder: John Campbell—owner of the Sou’Wester, father of chair Nicole Campbell and stepson of commissioner Judy Dauphinee—had rented one of his buildings to Tom’s Lobster Shack, McCain said, “without appropriate [commission] permits and yet, despite it being told to shut down, it continued.”

 

Adding to the confusion is the reality that the commission itself may have bylaws, but it has no bylaw enforcement officers and no way to enforce its rulings.

 

 

While her own rezoning request was rejected out of hand, she adds, the commission’s minutes show it had “worked collaboratively with the owner of the Sou’wester so it could receive approval to open its commercial outdoor deck despite this not being allowed according to the current bylaws.”

McCain insists her point in raising these questions wasn’t to shut down any other businesses—the goal, she says, should be to find a legal way to allow all of them to operate—but she also wants to ensure that the commission treats everyone the same way.

Adding to the confusion is the reality that the commission itself may have bylaws, but it has no bylaw enforcement officers and no way to enforce its rulings.

Frustrated by all of that—as well as the commission’s refusal to even hold a public hearing on her rezoning request—McCain filed a complaint with the provincial ombudsman in September 2023, claiming that the commission, which is a provincially appointed body, did not follow due process in its decision making. That complaint, along with similar ones from Paul and Claire Paruch, and Kelly Westhaver and Brian Cottam, are currently being investigated.

Whatever happens with her complaint, it now seems likely McCain will ultimately get the core zoning she wants for her properties. On Friday, October 13, the day after the final public hearing, the commissioners voted to ask the provincial minister to approve its new zoning bylaw. It designates McCain’s properties as core—but confirms that the Paruch and Westhaver properties are residential.

McCain says she’s “lost faith in the process. There are serious, systemic problems in Peggy’s Cove that must be addressed,” she told the October public hearing. And then she proceeded to enumerate them. “There is a need for governance reform, a lack of transparency, inconsistent decision-making that appears to play favourites, systemic conflict of interest given that the membership of the [commission] is required to be drawn from such a small pool of residents, a lack of professional support staff for the [commission] whose members lack the expertise to make decisions on land use planning matters and finally, ineffective and uneven bylaw enforcement.”

Phew…

 

John Campbell wasn’t born in Peggys Cove. He was born nearly 100 kms away in Windsor, Nova Scotia, but he moved to the Cove with his family in 1967 after his father bought the tearoom that became the Sou’Wester. John was three years old.

“I feel like I’m born and bred,” he says now. “I don’t know anything else. My best friends are in Peggys Cove.” His first job at the Sou’Wester was picking up garbage around the property when he was 12. “Growing up, I used to come in here at five in the morning and scrub floors and clean bathrooms. I was a dishwasher here. There’s not a job in this restaurant I didn’t do when I was a kid.” He took over the business after his father, Jack, died in 2008.

These days, he says he has commercial business interests beyond the Sou’Wester, but none in Peggys Cove. That said, he acknowledges, he does own real estate in the cove, including the building that houses Tom’s Lobster Shack.

In Campbell’s telling, the building had been operated as a commercial venture for a decade before he bought it as a commercial property. “The real estate agent said it was taxed as commercial, so it was commercial.” But when Campbell decided to launch his own T-shirt shop in the space, “I made applications to the Peggys Cove Commission. I submitted that the space was within the percentage you were allowed to operate a home business out of. And I did have the Peggys Cove Commission’s permission to operate that T-shirt business. So, when it switched to Tom’s, I thought that my approval to operate a business was still current.”

It wasn’t.

And he didn’t have an occupancy permit for the restaurant. When the commission told him Tom’s wasn’t compliant with the bylaws, “I made a conscious decision … to pay a fine if I get fined and hope that the new bylaws will allow me to operate the business that’s there.”

“And that’s fair. I’m not knocking that; it’s all done legally. But the people that don’t live here aren’t community-minded, don’t have a love of the community like I do.”

—John Campbell

He rejects suggestions that the commission favours him because of his family connections. “Nicole, my daughter, whom I love dearly, is the apple of my eye. But number one, we don’t talk about any application I make, and number two, she is very forthright and recuses herself of any discussions that have to do with me.”

Campbell says Peggys Cove has changed in recent years, in part because of the decline in the community’s traditional residential population coupled with the arrival of a new breed of property owner-investors. “And that’s fair. I’m not knocking that; it’s all done legally. But the people that don’t live here aren’t community-minded, don’t have a love of the community like I do.”

Though he doesn’t name him, Campbell blames what he calls the current “war” in the Cove on Paul Paruch. “It’s really been driven by one person who bought a property knowing how it was zoned and isn’t happy that it’s taken this long for it to be rezoned.”

And he adds that any suggestion he or his family manipulate decisions behind the scenes to protect his business from competition is “ridiculous. I’m not scared of any other business coming to Peggys Cove. I’m pro-business, not against business.”

 

Kelly Westhaver and Brian Cottam have taken their property at 173 Peggys Point Road off the market because there is no market so long as it remains zoned residential. In theory, their pending sale remains pending for another few months, but transforming pending to sold depends on the provincial government either rejecting the Peggys Cove Commission’s recommended land use bylaw (unlikely), or the commission itself experiencing a change of heart (even more unlikely).

That’s not to say there have not been new—and perplexing—developments in this already head-spinning saga. On October 17—five days after the final public hearing and four days after the Peggys Cove Commission agreed on a final zoning plan to submit to the minister— an online business news site published a scoop of its own.

On July 11, Linkletter, Cudmore, Dennis Campbell, the operator of the bus-tour operator Ambassatours, and John Campbell, owner of the Sou’Wester, had incorporated a new company called Peggys Point Inc.“The company’s purpose,” it was reported, “is unclear.”

What is really going on? No one seems to know for certain. There have been reports that John Campbell dropped out of the company in September around the time when the zoning was changed back to residential, but Campbell himself isn’t talking. “I’m not going to comment on that,” he tells me, in part, he says, “because somebody’s trying to make a point out of it.”

Brian Cottam shakes his head. “Welcome to another episode of ‘As the Cove Turns.’”