Unsustainable

Council’s Talbot on the Trail decision testing the resilience of working families

Story: Corey Engelsdorfer

The texts and emails began pinging the newspaper desktops shortly after six on Thursday morning. Framers, plumbers, excavators, landscapers, HVAC techs, appliance suppliers, roofers. All were looking for an explanation for Council’s decision to kill a subdivision project on the north end of Picton the night before.

Most of them are younger, with kids, often holding down two, three or more jobs in a year to get by. Each saw the prospect of 290 townhomes as a steady bit of employment for five to ten years. Now they don’t know what to think.

Evan Nash owns the hardware store in Wellington. It has been in the same family, the same location since it was founded in 1905. It is a remarkable story of resilience. Through Depression, war, Barley Days, canning boom times and all the struggling years in between.

Evan Nash enjoying some down time, with daughter Isla.

Evan is a young man with a beautiful young family. He is smart, ambitious and hardworking. He raises his hand anytime there is a committee, school or agency seeking to understand the dynamics of this village. Despite his age, he has headed the village’s business association for the past five years because he commands respect and co-operation of the herd of cats who strive to make a go of it here.

Evan wears many hats. He operates the thriving hardware/everything store. He has expanded the appliance business by carving out a solid niche—combining outstanding service, delivery and takeaway of the old equipment. He has a piece of a startup home design/build business. He is on his third fixer-upper home in Wellington. Restoring, remodelling, and reselling. As with the five Nash generations before him, he has learned to be resilient. He had to.

But he isn’t so sure about Prince Edward County anymore. He isn’t so sure if Shire Hall is working for him or against him. He isn’t sure whether he will raise his hand again.

He was exhausted and deflated when he called Thursday morning. If not a project of homes featuring some with prices under $300,000, then what would be acceptable to this council?

He is up and gone most days before 7 a.m. Home for a couple of hours at 4 p.m. to see his kids. Dinner with the family. Then it’s back to work for four hours. Or more. Six or seven days a week. He enjoys his work. But it is a hard slog. He knows that his peers—those who have managed to hang on in the County—are putting in similar hours. Evan can handle it.

But it is so much harder to do when local government makes decisions that dim your prospects for a future here.