Members of the Port Medway Fire Department Auxiliary: Vincent Dieras, Deb Noble, Deb Lemon, Barbara Parnell, Sandi Simpson and Darlene Norman. (Rick Conrad)

As people around Queens County woke up Monday morning to power outages, volunteers at the Port Medway Fire Hall were busy giving people a place to warm up and get something to eat.

The Port Medway Fire Department Auxiliary opened the hall to everyone who needed it. They started preparing food at 6:30 Monday morning and still hadn’t stopped Wednesday afternoon.

“Port Medway is a very special community and for years it has always looked after itself,” says Darlene Norman, president of the auxiliary.

“Whenever there is an emergency or a power outage, this hall immediately becomes open and there’s always prepared home-cooked meals.”

“It’s open 24 hours a day until the power comes back on,” says auxiliary member Deb Lemon, “so even in the middle of the night you can come and recharge and warm up.”

Norman and Lemon are part of a team of about a dozen volunteers who have served three meals a day since early Monday, feeding up to 35 people at a time.

“We do scrambled eggs, pancakes, bacon,” Norman says.

“One day for lunch, we had pizzas, one day we did sandwiches up. We did the best spaghetti and meatballs that people said they ever had. We had homemade cheese biscuits, homemade chicken soup.”

The fire hall has a diesel-powered generator so that it can open to anyone after storms, hurricanes and power outages. A Nova Scotia Power crew even stopped in on Wednesday for lunch.

It’s a place for people to find comfort as well as community.

“Anyone without power,” Norman says. “Mill Village people were here, there were people from over in West Berlin, East Berlin, … everyone knows, when it’s open, it’s open.

“This is a real community. It’s small, everyone’s compacted because of the way this community is designed, people know each other. It’s social, people come play cards. And whether or not you’re a member of the auxiliary it really doesn’t have a bearing on if you come in and help in this kitchen.”

MIke Vandale, left, and three friends play cards on Wednesday at the Port Medway Fire Hall. (Rick Conrad)

Mike Vandale, who lives in East Port Medway, was still without power Wednesday morning, so he was at the hall for some breakfast and a game of cribbage with three friends.

“It’s been fantastic. The auxiliary have performed above and beyond all expectations. Fantastic.

“Camaraderie, food, warmth, friendship. It’s a great place to come and see everybody and catch up on the news.”

Vandale adds, laughing: “Misery loves company.”

Norman says there are a lot of younger retirees in the small fishing village who have the time and energy to pitch in when needed.

Even when they’re not offering free meals during power outages, the hall welcomes the community for a free lunch every Wednesday. That’s in addition to their regular dances, bingo nights and other events.

People show their appreciation for the free meals by leaving generous donations. And Norman and Lemon say management at the Sobeys in Liverpool has also been supportive, giving the group a $50 gift card so they could stock up on groceries this week.

“That’s the community rubbing off on everybody else around us,” Lemon says.

Most of Port Medway had been reconnected as of Wednesday afternoon. A Nova Scotia Power spokeswoman told QCCR that crews were working to restore power to more than 200 customers in Queens County as of 3:30 p.m. Wednesday.

The Port Medway Fire Hall isn’t an official comfort centre. And it wasn’t the only place in Queens County offering help during the outage. Eight other locations were offering various services. You can check out the list on the Region of Queens website here.

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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Schools are closed and power is out around Queens County as the area got its first significant snowstorm of the season. (Rick Conrad)

The season’s first significant snowfall in Queens County knocked out power for many, with schools and some businesses closing for the day or delaying their opening.

About 20 centimetres of heavy snow fell, while power was out in many parts of the county, with Nova Scotia Power reporting about 130,000 outages across the province.

The outage map, however, wasn’t displaying all outages correctly. Residents reported outages throughout south Queens, including Port Medway, Eagle Head, Beach Meadows and Brooklyn. But the map was showing very few households affected.

The Port Medway Fire Department has set up a comfort centre at the fire hall for those without power.

The Region of Queens administrative offices were closed for the day. The South Shore Regional Centre for Education closed schools for the day.

If you’re in the Liverpool area, follow this link to see expected snowclearing response times.

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

The Region of Queens has reached a deal with Renewall Energy to supply electricity from the Mersey River Wind farm. (Renewall Energy Inc.)

The Region of Queens will be using wind energy produced in their own backyard to keep the lights on in municipal properties.

The municipality will be one of the first customers of the Mersey River Wind Project, set to begin operating in 2026.

Halifax-based Roswall Development Inc. are the owners of Mersey River Wind. It plans to build 33 wind turbines on about 80 hectares of Crown land west of the Mersey River in Milton.

Roswall will sell power directly to customers, bypassing Nova Scotia Power, under the name Renewall Energy. Roswall is the first in the province to be awarded a licence to sell power directly to consumers under the Renewable to Retail program introduced in 2015.

It will deliver electricity using Nova Scotia Power’s grid, but customers will be billed directly by Renewall. They want to sign up commercial users first and then open it up to residential customers.

Region of Queens councillors voted last March to allow the project to go ahead.

Sometime after that, the region signed a deal with the company to get its electricity from the wind farm. It will be among 30 government, commercial and industrial customers who have signed up so far.

It appears councillors approved the deal in a closed-door session at some point before the end of 2024, under the old municipal council. The agreement was never discussed in an open council meeting. 

And even the region’s recently elected Mayor Scott Christian couldn’t give QCCR the details.

But he said he’s happy about the agreement with Roswall.

“I know that it was council directed the municipality to enter an agreement with Roswall with respect to being a customer,” Christian said Thursday in an interview, “but I don’t know the number of megawatts or the duration of the deal or when that actually would have been advanced by the administration. I don’t know those details right now.

“I think we should be proud and I don’t see any reason why any of that can’t come to light.”

Queens isn’t the only municipality to sign up. The Halifax region, the Town of Bridgewater and the Municipality of Shelburne have also signed deals with Renewall.

According to a staff report last October for the Municipality of Shelburne, the deal with Renewall could see that municipality saving up to $500,000 over 20 years in electricity costs.

Renewall’s presentation to Shelburne’s municipal council said they offer rates two to five per cent lower than Nova Scotia Power’s rates in the first year of an agreement, with a fixed increase of one per cent each year over a 20-year contract.

Roswall CEO Dan Roscoe told QCCR that the wind farm could be supplying electricity to customers by the end of 2026. The company is scheduled to begin construction of the basic infrastructure this spring, with turbines set to arrive in the spring of 2026.

“The key feature of our rates is that they’re fixed over time,” Roscoe said. “The energy portion would be essentially predictable over the term of the contract, so that creates a certainty from a power price perspective that isn’t available with the public utility.”

Roscoe said that in addition to the municipalities signed up so far, they’ve also signed up some private-sector customers too, some of which are on the South Shore.

He said that many of their early customers want a greener option, either because their customers or governments are demanding it. Another reason is purely practical.

“Large energy users, and I think this applies to the public sector entities as well, that have perhaps fixed budgets, having predictability is actually very valuable, especially if electricity is a big percentage of your expenses.

“So the larger energy users, if they can get a hedge on their power price, that’s very advantageous for them.”

An added bonus for the Region of Queens is the expected annual tax revenue boost of up to $800,000 from the wind farm. Christian said switching to renewable energy is a no-brainer.

“In terms of realizing savings for the ratepayer, savings for the municipality as it relates to our energy consumption, we’re big energy consumers, we spend a lot of money on electricity, and so where we can realize savings while also achieving meaningful progress toward greening our facilities and reducing carbon emissions associated with energy for our facilities, it feels win-win-win to me.”

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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