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Nova Scotia Shut Down Libraries. Then Things Got Ugly

Premier Tim Houston’s cuts to cultural funding have ignited a backlash his government can’t seem to shake

Geoff Ball’s arrest video is shocking. From a small crowd of protesters, the eighty-year-old is grabbed by two young Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers. Struggling to walk—Ball is blind in one eye and suffers from the effects of two heart attacks—he’s taken to a wall and slammed face-first into the brick before being handcuffed. Shortly afterward, according to Ball, he’s dumped roughly into the back of a police car and sent to the station to be reprimanded. Everything happens in the space of a few minutes, turning an ordinary act of civic participation into a hellish ordeal.

Nova Scotia premier Tim Houston’s budget initially slashed $130 million in grants funding to community and arts programs

Cuts in the province have been met with backlash and protests, as libraries and arts organizations face cuts

According to polling, Houston is now one of the most unpopular premiers in the country

Ball lives outside Canning, a tight-knit community in Nova Scotia’s lush Annapolis Valley. The largely agricultural landscape has recently become ground zero in the fight against cuts to Nova Scotia’s cultural sector. Persistent provincial underfunding forced the Annapolis Valley Regional Library system to announce plans earlier this year to permanently close five of its ten libraries, including the busy Port Williams branch close to Ball’s home.

Many are tired of—even enraged by—what they perceive as the government’s assault on culture, treaty rights, and the environment. On July 15, knowing Nova Scotia premier Tim Houston was at an event at nearby Acadia University, Ball and other community members gathered on campus. Their peaceful protest drew a crowd of about fifty, many of whom were elderly, who gathered brandishing handmade signs that read “Save Our Libraries” and “Save Our Museums.”

When Ball saw someone snatch a protest sign from a vehicle, he confronted the person. “I saw this man try to throw it away. I went to put it back on the car, and all hell broke loose.”

According to Ball, the snatcher grabbed the sign from Ball and lunged at him. When Ball tried to defend himself, RCMP officers arrested him and hauled him away, over the loud cries of “Shame on you” from the crowd. Ball says none of the officers at the scene tried to intervene to de-escalate the situation. “I was scared stiff. I thought I was fighting for my life.”

Around the same time that Ball was arrested, a group of protesters surrounded the premier’s vehicle as he was being whisked from the university. One of them—a nineteen-year-old man—climbed onto the roof of the car and smashed the vehicle’s windshield. (Days later, according to the CBC, he was identified and charged with intimidation and mischief before being released on........

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