THEY WERE DUTCH IMMIGRANTS WHO MOVED TO CANADA, FOUND A PERFECT HOME AND A PLACE FOR HORSES. WHAT THEY DIDN’T EXPECT WAS HAVING TO DEAL WITH THE LOCAL COUNCIL AND BUREAUCRATS.

Jan and Gerrie Dangremond used to talk about moving to Canada. Holland was home. But Holland, for Gerrie, a farm girl — Jan is a trucker — was a place where they would never be able to afford a property any bigger than the modest-sized home in which they lived with their two daughters, Valerie and Frederique.

“I didn’t need a farm,” Gerrie says. “But I love having space around me.”

So four years ago they did it: they moved to New Brunswick, eventually settling on the outskirts of Salisbury, a village west of Moncton. The 5.6-acre property boasted a big, old white house with a big, old broken-down barn out back, plenty of room for the family pets, Misty, a brown horse with a grumpy disposition, and Reiner, a 16-year-old Palomino with arthritis and a personality, according to Valerie Dangremond, who cares for both animals, of a “Teddy bear.”

The Dangremonds spent $25,000 fixing up the barn. They built a new fence. They had found what they were looking for.

“We’d found our dream house,” Gerrie says. “There was room for the horses. It was perfect.”

Then a letter arrived on the Dangremonds’ doorstep in July 2016. It was from the Southeast Regional Service Commission in Moncton, and it was the first shot in what has become an everwidening, ongoing municipal spat that, to date, has ensnared two former Liberal MPs, a Dutch family with two horses and a village council determined to banish the beasts because of a municipal bylaw violation.

“It is too sad for words,” Gerrie says.

The letter informed the Dangremonds that the natural wood colour fencing they erected was illegal, since they lacked a permit to build it. Gerrie, mortified, phoned the commission office. A gentleman there informed her that not only was the fence illegal, but it had been reported that there was a large animal on the property — and was this so?

“I said, ‘Yes, we have our two horses — otherwise we wouldn’t need fencing,’ ” says Gerrie. “He said: ‘That is not allowed.’ And I was silent, actually, and I said, ‘We have two horses. Our plan was to move here. Our plan was to fence in the field.’ “

Alas, the Dangremonds’ plan did not account for the small print. Their dream home was zoned residential, not rural. It didn’t matter that neighbours, including a nearby cattle farm, another family with a horse — and the family next door — were zoned rural. The Dangremonds weren’t, and there could be no horses on residential property, a decision council reinforced on Oct. 10 by a 3-2 vote denying the Dangremonds’ motion to have their property rezoned as rural.

“It pulls at your heartstrings,” deputy mayor Shawn McNeil, who voted against the Dangremonds’ motion, told the Moncton Times & Transcript at the time.

Much of the reasoning behind council’s rejection derived from a Southeast Regional Planning Commission report — file number 17-1108. The report cites a need to protect the village’s “underground water source,” defines horses as “livestock” — not family pets — and concludes that “a change of this magnitude to the (Municipal) Plan should not be done based on a site-specific request due to the long-term ramifications the changes would have on the village.”

In other words: changing the bylaw for one family would, in theory, open council to other petitioners seeking changes to this or that bylaw to suit their fancy. It didn’t matter that a neighbour of the Dangremonds collected close to 800 signatures — in a village of 2,200 — of locals in favour of letting the family keep its horses, or that people from as far away as Cape Breton ad called to wish them well. Council’s decision was final. The horses had to go. Or do they? Mayor Terry Keating, his deputy, and other members of the say-no-to-Misty-and-Reiner camp did not respond to interview requests. Paul Zed, however, did. Zed, a former Liberal MP from New Brunswick now living in Toronto, spends summers at a family cottage back East. He first encountered the Dangremond saga in the local papers in July. His initial thought? “This can’t be true.”

So he went on Facebook, read more, wondered aloud if what he was reading was “fake news,” decided it wasn’t and declared to his wife, Wendy, that he was going to send the Dangremonds a cheque to help cover their legal fees in their dispute with the village.

“Wendy said to me, ‘Have you not looked in the mirror?’ Zed says. ‘You’re a lawyer.’ “

She was right, and instead of writing a cheque, the former politician waded into the fray, cold-calling the Dangremonds, offering to help.

“These are lovely people,” he says. Zed emailed Mayor Keating and volunteered to mediate a solution. “I heard crickets,” he says. “Nothing. I am a nobody — but I am still a constituent of the people of New Brunswick, and still a voter and a taxpayer, and so why isn’t (mayor Keating) responding? “It is nuts.” Zed was at New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant’s wedding in October. He got to talking with Brian Murphy, another former Liberal MP and past mayor of Moncton and lawyer who was equally animated by the Dangremonds’ plight. Murphy has joined the family’s (growing) legal team on a pro-bono basis, spearheading their November 9th application with the Court of Queen’s Bench for a judicial review of council’s decision rejecting their rezoning request.

“And that’s where we are at today,” Zed says.

Winter is coming to Salisbury. Misty and Reiner were ordered removed from the property by Oct. 31, a deadline the Dangremonds let pass. On a late November afternoon, under a blue sky, the horses were noodling about their paddock, and happy to see Valerie arrive home. Valerie climbed down from Misty’s back to take a call from Toronto.

“One of the biggest things that made me want to move to Canada was the chance to have horses,” the 16-year-old says. She rides Misty daily. Reiner, with his arthritis, is more the elder statesman, and instead of exercise he receives extra coddling.

Valerie describes the fight over her horses as “ridiculous.” Then she passes the phone back to her mother and rides away.

COURTESY GERRIE DANGREMOND Valerie Dangremond with horses Misty and Reiner. The family, who are Dutch immigrants to New Brunswick, have been told they could not keep the horses on their property, which is zoned as residential.