Arson jolts family’s plans

Couple was saving up to return to Nail Pond home

When Kim Ellsworth and her husband, Glen, closed up their Nail Pond, P.E.I., home four and a half years ago and moved to Alberta for work, they shared a suitcase.

“We didn’t take anything else. We left everything else behind because we knew we were coming back to it,” the West Prince native said by phone from Alberta, Thursday morning. “This was supposed to be a five-year thing. We left P.E.I. to get financially on our feet and to get in a better position so that, when we come back, we can do our home, renovate it, make it something that we worked hard for. That was the whole purpose of coming out west, to get ahead, right?”

Their plans were jolted Tuesday night when a relative called to notify them their home had been set on fire. Tignish Fire Department responded and put the fire out, but the home had sustained extensive damage.

“You could’ve fixed it up to make it quite livable,” said Tignish fire chief Allan Gavin, describing the condition of the house prior to Tuesday’s fire.

“It was not an abandoned house,” he said, before adding, “it doesn’t make any difference: it’s somebody’s property.

At 2 a.m. (Mountain time) Thursday, Ellsworth awoke again to learn their house had been set on fire a second time. This time it burned to the ground. The Tignish Fire Department, returning to their fire hall after being turned back from an assistance call to the Miminegash Fire Department, came upon the house in flames.

See 20-YEAR-OLD, A2

ERIC MCCARTHY/JOURNAL PIONEER Wade Ellsworth of Nail Pond surveys what’s left of his nephew’s home. A series of two fires, on Oct. 30 and early on Nov. 1, levelled the home of Glen and Kim Ellsworth. The couple moved to Alberta four and a half years ago but were planning to return to their Nail Pond home.

SUBMITTED The Ellsworth home following a fire on Oct 30. A second fire early Thursday morning levelled the house.