Located an hour and forty minutes down the coast from Halifax, the Region of Queens Municipality, Nova Scotia, encompasses over 2,700 square kilometers, 10,000 residents and over a dozen rural communities.
“Somebody said to me, I love Queens, but it’s a half hour too far,” mayor elect Scott Christian says. “The Chesters and Truros and Windsors of the world, they’re kind of commuter towns to the HRM. When you want to have fun, you go to the city. Whereas we need to create our own fun here. The fact that people sleep on Queens is kind of the beauty of it. It has real hidden gem vibes to it. We need to grow it, but I don’t want that to go away. Seven-year-olds bike to school by themselves. There’s not that many places left in the world where that’s the case. It’s very, very cool.”
Since amalgamating with the town of Liverpool in 1996, the hodgepodge of beaches, parks, and villages that make up the Region of Queens Municipality has been presided over by a single town council and mayor. And on Oct 22, 2024, Scott Christian won a close election to become that mayor. Winning by a margin of less than 200 votes, the consultant turned politician will preside over a deeply divided municipality.
“Something we need to navigate is we’re a community in transition. The demographic trend of decline has reversed and we’re starting to see growth and it really accelerated with COVID,” Christian says. “Growth in Queens County is going to occur and it can either happen to us, and we’re just passengers along for the ride, or we can direct it, be deliberate about it so we can make the change happen with us and for us.”
Since moving to the Region of Queens Municipality in 2017, the rapid pace of change has been very apparent to Scott and his family.
“When we moved here, [Liverpool] was still very much defined as the town that used to be Bowater. There was one single industrial employer, it closed down and with it there was a massive collective trauma to the community,” says Scott. “But you ask someone who moved here in 2022, they don’t even know what the Bowater paper company was. It’s not on the radar at all. To them, it’s this idyllic piece of Nova Scotia heritage that’s trapped in time, and you’re surrounded by these white sand beaches and amazing brackish rivers. And that’s great. We need to protect and celebrate that, but we also need jobs. But they’re like ‘I don’t!’ But the young families do.”
The tension between the way some affluent newcomers and lifelong residents view the Region of Queens Municipality will be a delicate balance for the new mayor.
“They are an integral part of our community,” Scott says about some new retired residents. “But they don’t see the despair. The housing insecurity, the food insecurity, the level of poverty that exists in the community. To them, it’s just not on their radar. You can’t blame them for it, it’s just not their experience. It’s almost invisible. But it’s not if you are a teacher in the school system or a social worker, or even if you’re a parent of young children, then it’s visible.”
Scott’s first encounter with rural poverty in the region is what led him to get involved in municipal politics.
“After we arrived here, we needed somewhere for our baby to go,” he recalls. “The then council wanted to get rid of the old school that the daycare was running out of… and so they issued eviction notices. It was a real high stakes moment. Without a licensed childcare facility, you would leave a huge swath of the community and young children in really vulnerable positions. In some cases, that’s the best meal those kids have is when they’re there.
I ended up spending six and a half years on the executive of the Queens Daycare Association. We secured the second biggest investment made in licensed childcare in the province in 2020. We have an over two and a half million dollar project going on, we’re going to go from 42 kids to 116 kids, licensed capacity.”
This community success, combined with the frustration he felt with the current local government, led Scott to get more deeply involved.
“I just became a very close observer of municipal government. And in my work as a performance measurement program evaluation analyst, all I do is examine public sector organizations. What I do for a living is examine the efficiency and effectiveness of public programs and policies and organizations,” Scott says. “I see a ton of opportunity for us to do better. Nuanced, localized, community based solutions are important. [The Municipality] needs to be able to connect the dots between the corporate and non-profit sector, the big United Ways and YMCAs of the world, and the provincial government and the federal government to advocate for the well being of the citizens.”
Scott is hopeful that the teamwork he has seen in the community will help see Queen’s County through the uncertain future.
“I’m really hopeful, when we can come together and connect as humans in a community way and work toward a common good, all of a sudden all of those divides that are origin based and culturally based and what have you, that they melt away,” Scott says, “I think an excellent example of that is Mersey Point Hall. That board has done really, really great things. If you look at their board, it’s like a third of people who are born and raised, a third of people who have been here for 15 or 20 years and a third of people who have only been here for three years. But they all come together with a common interest and they work well together and they engage with each other. They don’t agree on everything, but they’re constructing community. It’s community that includes all of those perspectives. And I think it’s incumbent upon the municipality to foster that type of thing.”
As for Scott’s immediate future, you can catch him on the Astor Theatre stage this holiday season.
“I’m performing at A Homeland Christmas in some limited capacity in December. I would highly recommend it, even if you’re like ‘Bah humbug, I hate Christmas music!’” Scott says. “I sang a Pavorotti song in it last year.”
