Family forced to give up horses in N.B. zoning row
DESPITE 800-STRONG PETITION, VILLAGE COUNCIL FIRM
As her mother drove home to Salisbury, N.B., from a lawyer’s office in nearby Moncton last Friday, Valerie Dangremond, 17, sat quietly in the passenger seat. They had met that afternoon about her two pet horses, Misty and Reiner — the horses who eased her adjustment to life in Canada as a young Dutch immigrant who barely spoke English; the horses she rides, pampers and medicates each day on the 5½ acres with a barn, a brook and room to roam that her family calls home.
The horses, thanks to local zoning bylaws, who have been ordered off the Dangremond property by this time next month.
Last week, a N.B. court refused to review the Village of Salisbury’s rejection of the Dangremonds’ request to have their property rezoned from residential to rural, the legalese that has underpinned the village’s yearslong effort to have Misty and Reiner moved.
The effect of the court’s decision — the horses have to go — means different things to different people. It affirmed the viewpoint of Salisbury’s mayor, who thinks municipal rules must be followed. To a former N.B. MP, it’s a short-sighted snub of an immigrant family in the only province whose population count is shrinking. To the Dangremonds’ next-door neighbour, it means Misty and Reiner will no longer lope over to her fence when she beckons them to eat an apple from her hand.
To Valerie, who doesn’t like to talk about her pets’ pending departure, the matter is even more personal.
“The horses just mean the world to her,” said Gerrie Dangremond, Valerie’s mother.
The Dangremonds, who emigrated from the Netherlands to rural New Brunswick in 2013, have fought to keep their animals at home ever since they jumped at the chance, in April 2016, to purchase what Gerrie calls her dream property in Salisbury. The house was big enough for Gerrie and her husband Jan to run a little bed-andbreakfast, and the land spacious enough for Misty, a brown horse who doesn’t like to be alone, and Reiner, a 17-year-old palomino rescue with a lung disease.
But shortly after they arrived in the 2,000-person village, local officials told the Dangremonds that the horses couldn’t stay. Salisbury considered their property to be residential, even though multiple homes around them — abodes at which their neighbours keep horses — are zoned rural.
In October 2017, Salisbury councillors shot down the Dangremonds’ application to have their property rezoned in a 3-2 vote, prompting hundreds of residents — many of whom the Dangremonds had never met — to mobilize in support of Misty and Reiner. More than 800 locals signed a petition that urged council to reconsider. Last month, the Dangremonds asked the provincial Court of Queen’s Bench to undertake a judicial review of council’s decision.
In dismissing their request on Dec. 10, Justice George Rideout wrote that Salisbury council treated the Dangremonds fairly and the family has “flaunted the laws of the Village.” He ruled that judicial review wasn’t an appropriate way to contest a zoning decision. Councillors subsequently met and ordered the horses removed from the Dangremond property by mid-January, said Stephen Trueman, the lawyer who represented the village in court.
The ruling has devastated the Dangremonds and disappointed Misty and Reiner’s throng of supporters, including Paul Zed, a lawyer and former Liberal MP who provided pro bono legal aid to the family — and who said he’s astonished at how Salisbury council has opposed the outcome residents want.
Salisbury mayor Terry Keating said the village’s push to relocate Misty and Reiner isn’t a personal crusade against the Dangremonds.
“It has been about rules and the importance of adhering to these rules,” Keating said in a statement. “It was determined in the current Municipal Plan that agricultural uses, no matter how small, should not be undertaken in this particular part of the Village.
“I appreciate that we are only talking about two horses in this case, but how do we tell the next applicants who want to have livestock that they cannot have them if we have already made an exception?”
Gerrie Dangremond isn’t sure where the horses will go next. The family is going to try to keep them close to home, since Reiner needs Valerie to give him a varying dose of medication each day. As Gerrie said in her affidavit to court, moving the horses anywhere in winter would likely cause Misty “great stress” and be “significantly detrimental” to Reiner in his poor health.
The Dangremonds might appeal the ruling on the grounds that courts should be able to scrutinize municipal land-use decisions, said their lawyer, Brian Murphy. But as the holidays approach, they and others in Salisbury are also steeling themselves to say goodbye to the horses in a matter of weeks.
Janice Jackson, 65, who lives next door to the Dangremonds, says she is going to miss greeting Misty and Reiner in the field out back.
“I truly thought that when this whole thing began that common sense and compassion would reign,” Jackson said.