When Paul Meade moved into his house on a picturesque island overlooking Nova Scotia’s St. Margaret’s Bay three years ago, he could barely spot its brown wood siding from the road through the property’s dense bands of trees.
He started to cut it back, at first for esthetic reasons.
But after a wildfire broke out in the nearby community of Upper Tantallon in May 2023 — destroying 151 homes in its path — Meade soon realized his proactive tree-clearing had another purpose: fire prevention.
At first, he felt some relief that wildfire wasn’t on his own doorstep — until another fire was.
“We thought we were OK until a brush fire broke out on the island,” said Meade, 70, in the driveway of his home on Sheep’s Head Island.
“If it hadn’t been for the diversion of an air crew to come over here before the fire trucks got here …