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.

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 eleven libraries, including the busy Port Williams branch close to Ball’s home. (The Village of Lawrencetown’s library withdrew from the system prior to the closures.)

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 hand-made 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 bail.) Meanwhile, Ball was being taken to the police station feeling nauseous, dizzy, and struggling to breathe.

Politics in Nova Scotia has grown increasingly toxic as of late. Amidst a year of unpopular cuts and far-reaching legislation that have met with wide public protest, Premier Houston seems determined to force through an agenda of expanding resource development and limiting public dissent, even in the face of declining support for his government.

Houston spent part of the summer on a province-wide listening tour, visiting small communities to speak to local chambers of commerce. While several of his stops have been met with demonstrations, none have been as volatile as the events in Wolfville.

Houston’s budget earlier this year initially slashed $130 million in grants funding to community and arts programs, hitting rural communities especially hard. The government completely eliminated funding for the Artists in Communities and Writers in the Schools programs and slashed 50 percent from artist equity programs, which support African Nova Scotian, Indigenous, and other artists facing systemic barriers. Grants to Arts Nova Scotia suffered 30 percent reductions, affecting groups such as Symphony Nova Scotia. A dozen museums around the province have been shuttered, and annual dedicated support to publishers has been gutted entirely, making Nova Scotia the only province without core funding to nurture homegrown literary talent.

In an Instagram post, Heated Rivalry author Rachel Reid called the cuts “devastating” and credited Halifax’s arts scene for her development and success. In August, she donated $300,000 in a bid to help keep the Annapolis Valley libraries open. On September 12, she headlined a fundraiser hosted by the Annapolis Valley Regional Library, which raised just over $70,000—enough to keep libraries open for a few more months.

The province’s decisions blindsided observers and seemed to make little economic sense. Over the past fifteen years, national growth in the arts sector has outpaced that of oil and gas, construction, and manufacturing. In 2024, Canada’s arts and culture sector directly contributed $65 billion in direct gross domestic product to the country’s economy, accounting for over 2 percent of total GDP and supporting over 1.1 million jobs. According to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, every dollar invested in the arts generates $29 in additional economic activity. Given such a strong business case, Nova Scotia finance minister John Lohr has been fiercely criticized by opposition parties for not making clear the rationale for his cuts.

Sébastien Labelle, artistic director of the Mayworks Festival and a member of the Nova Scotia Arts Coalition, calls the arts in the province “undervalued and underestimated.” In an op-ed for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Labelle notes that Halifax ranks fourth out of twenty-two Canadian metropolitan areas when it comes to how the arts drive vibrancy and economic growth. Labelle says the cultural contribution to Nova Scotia’s GDP in 2023 rose 9.2 percent from the previous year, a larger increase than in any other province.

In Atlantic Canada, one of the great literary success stories of the past decade has taken place in rural Cape Breton. Executive director Rebecca Silver Slayter says the Cabot Trail Writers Festival grew from a dream likely hatched from someone’s kitchen table to a vibrant annual festival attracting Canada’s top writers, serving as an incubator and champion for the next generation of local artists. The festival has previously survived the ravages of COVID-19 and Hurricane Fiona.

But news of provincial cuts came just as Silver Slayter was putting together this October’s lineup, which includes Kate Beaton, author of Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands; CBC host Elamin Abdelmahmoud; and veteran reporter Whit Fraser. Three grant programs the festival relies upon have been eliminated, including support for youth mentorship and funding to bring writers into local schools. Other funding grants vital to the festival have been reduced by up to half. In total, the festival has lost about $20,000.

In a region that has struggled economically, Silver Slayter says culture is how people come together to survive hardship. “People are fiddling in their kitchens; people are telling stories in their homes. It’s a way of life.”

Silver Slayter cut her own salary and was working as a volunteer over the summer, relying on a line of credit. She’s been fundraising to keep the festival going, and she’s hoping other grant funding will come through. Still, she doesn’t know if that will be enough to keep the festival going in its current form after this year.

The day Houston’s car was surrounded and attacked in Wolfville, the premier’s office issued a statement about the protest, failing to acknowledge Ball’s arrest and assault and that the demonstration, up until then, had been peaceful. Instead, the statement calls the protesters rioters, stating, “When bad actors resort to damaging property and putting lives at risk, they do nothing to advance constructive dialogue. That’s not the Bluenoser way.”

While public outcry did result in Houston’s government restoring funding for programs for disability and senior supports and grants for Indigenous and African Nova Scotian students, the Progressive Conservative majority meant reductions to cultural spending passed through the legislature this spring. There have been no signals from the government that these cuts will be reversed, despite Houston’s prior claims about how much he values the arts.

All this comes as Houston’s government continues to slide in the polls. Houston is now one of the most unpopular premiers in the country, and his government trails the opposition New Democratic Party, according to a July poll by Narrative Research. NDP leader Claudia Chender has promised to restore the funding should she become premier after the next election, which doesn’t need to be held until 2029.

For now, Ball says his faith in democracy in Nova Scotia has been shaken. And he no longer trusts the police. After spending an hour alone in the corridor outside the holding cells, fighting to get access to his nitroglycerin to keep another heart attack at bay, Ball was released by the RCMP without charge.

But he’s still deeply traumatized by the thought of further police violence. “Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I have flashbacks.” To a degree, he says, “it’s ruined my life.”

Correction: September 23, 2026: A previous version of this story stated that the Annapolis Valley Regional Library Board had announced the permanent closure of five of its ten libraries. In fact, while the Village of Lawrencetown’s library withdrew from the system ahead of the closures, there were eleven library locations at the time of the announcement. The Walrus regrets the error.

Source: The Walrus