Safety culture and the provincial fire ban

This was originally written on August 30, 2025, as a letter to the Chronicle-Herald, once the gold standard of respectable Nova Scotian newspapers. Apparently the Postmedia hollowing-out has replaced their editorial department with crickets, as my submission was entirely unacknowledged. Current county-by-county fire restrictions: https://novascotia.ca/burnsafe/

Dear Editor,

Now that people in Cape Breton and selected counties of eastern Nova Scotia can freely exercise their natural rights to go out into the woods again, it’s an opportune time to reflect on the burn ban that remains in place and the prevailing attitude that Halifax has the absolute right to micromanage our personal affairs in the name of safety.

For tens of thousands of years, man’s mastery of fire has made him unique in the animal kingdom. It is the wont of Tim Houston and his band of technocratic terrorists to rob us of this mastery, to attenuate marginal risk by infantilising us all.

Yes, this province, especially the mainland, has been subject to horrific conflagrations. But we need to focus on the chain of events that actually sparked these flames. Was it, in any of the cases:

– Someone safely enjoying a fire in their backyard fire pit?
– Someone just walking in the woods?

So why are we banning these activities? Yes, such measures do reduce the risk on the theoretical margins, but they also suck the joy out of life.

You would also think that any blacksmith worth their salt could run their forge without setting fire to their village. Yet the forge in Iona’s Highland Village is ashen cold today, which is an impactful problem: A unique bolt that sheared off of the wool carding machine can’t be repaired until the blacksmith can get back to work. None of this nonsense truly has to be. There is such a thing as an overabundance of caution.

It’s a pervasive problem: You literally can’t argue against safety. Recently, Parks Canada scuttled a successful longboarding fundraiser for cancer in the Cape Breton Highlands. The longboarders weren’t stupid – they had following and lead vehicles, radio communication, they stuck to one side of the road, and they pulled over when things were getting backed up behind them. None of that mattered to the bureaucratic busybodies.

Instead of taking sensible measures to attenuate risk, like teaching people how to use fire responsibly, we have an atmosphere of panic and retribution. Be sure to rat on your neighbours roasting s’mores so you can bankrupt them to the tune of $25,000.00. (Wait, don’t forget the “victim” surcharge – so much trauma, seeing others have fun – oh, and also HST, so it’s really $28,872.50.) I understand that forest fires and fires generally can be absolutely devastating. But we have to manage risks in a sensible way, particular to particular situations. Whether a particular fire is safe depends on the particulars. But we see no such nuance from this government.

Finally, a raspberry for Scott Tingley of Natural Resources, who said, “We’re just asking everyone to pitch in and help prevent fires.” No, you’re threatening them with outrageous fines, and out of that doubtless you’ll get sullen acceptance. A modicum of infringement on maximal liberty is justifiable, inasmuch as one must not set a fire in a dry wood and walk away, analogous to falsely exclaiming the presence of a conflagration at the cinema. But the best thing is to promote how to safely enjoy fires, such that fire prevention becomes genuinely the concern of everyone, not merely people cowering under the latest Halifax diktat.

– William Matheson
Bras d’Or, Cape Breton