Approximately eight years ago, Jeff Lear and Nadine Whalen invested their life savings in a bold retirement dream. They left behind their average suburban home in St. John’s, N.L., and purchased a plot of land in Nova Scotia’s Lunenburg County.
Mr. Lear cleared the property and used the trees he had cut down to build their off-grid home.
It has taken the couple almost nine years to build their dream home in stages, by hand. Construction has involved extensive landscaping, and outbuildings included a workshop, chicken coop, and rabbit house.
“We were just beautifying. We were at the beautifying stage,” Ms. Whalen told The Epoch Times on July 28. “Now it looks like a wasteland.”
Record-breaking storms hit the region on July 21 and brought flash-flooding to parts of Nova Scotia, causing extensive damage and killing at least three people in the province. One other person is still missing.
There had been no record in living memory of the small river located not far from the couple’s home having ever broken its banks, according to an elderly neighbour.
On this occasion, however, river levels rose so quickly in the small hours of July 22 that before they could gather themselves and realize what was happening, their car was already floating into the deck of their property.
“All our possessions are spread miles down the river. The rabbit home is several feet up in a tree,” Ms. Whalen said.
The whole house was ripped up and moved some 400 feet away until it wedged between two trees. Very little was salvageable, the couple said.
“When I look at all of this and think about starting over—I’m several years older now,” she said.
Mr. Lear has also had to contend with health problems. He had been scheduled for a long-awaited appointment for prostate surgery just a few days following the flood. The operation had to be postponed.
“Everything here depends on our direct effort, particularly now, and health is paramount,” Ms. Whalen said.
‘We’re About to Lose Everything’
On Friday, July 21, following a visit with a friend, Ms. Whalen arrived home around 10 p.m. Weather reports had forecast rain, but “it wasn’t calling for the torrent we ended up getting,” she said. Besides some thunder and lightening, nothing was remarkable by the time her 11 p.m. bedtime arrived.At 4:30 a.m., she awoke abruptly to Mr. Lear announcing, “The kayaks are gone, the car is about to float downriver, and we’re about to lose everything.”
Mr. Lear had built the home on piles so water would pass under the house should the river ever rise. He had also waterproofed the exterior of the foundation, so although they were surrounded by floodwater, Ms. Whalen didn’t initially believe they would lose it all.
Mr. Lear went to bring the rabbits and chickens to safety, and had to swim to do so. “We were concerned about life first,” Ms. Whalen said.
As Ms. Whalen is not a swimmer, there was little she could do but wait while Mr. Lear worked to secure what he could. She works part-time as an instructor and had some papers to grade, so she sat down to that task.
“I was just doing routine things to keep my mind occupied,” she said.
Then out of the corner of her eye, Ms. Whalen saw water seeping into the living room. It seems ridiculous now, Ms. Whalen said, but she laid down towels to soak it up.
On Mr. Lear’s return, they began moving electronic items up high and tried to plug holes to stem the flow of water, until finally Mr. Lear said it was time to get out of there. Ms. Whalen climbed into their loader some distance from the house and called their dogs, but the dogs wouldn’t come through the water.
At this point, the water was rushing so loudly, they could barely hear each other despite their shouting. Ms. Whalen watched as Mr. Lear attempted to reach the dogs. As he neared the deck, it snapped up against the house “like a mouse trap,” she said.
The deck hit Mr. Lear in the head. He knew it was time to get to safety himself then, and he made his way through the water toward the higher ground where the loader was. The current was so strong, Ms. Whalen said, that Mr. Lear nearly drowned despite being a strong swimmer.
‘Like A Morbid Movie’
“We’re all sitting there, it looked like a morbid movie. You’re watching your whole life that you’ve built over the last several years go down, but you can’t do anything,” Ms. Whalen said.“Our garden that we worked so hard at—we had a little arch entrance to it and I saw that just crumple,” she said. Little by little, it all crumpled “like paper maché.”
The part of the house facing the river was mostly windows, and Ms. Whalen watched as the windows broke and water gushed in. The kitchen furniture and the stove rushed out and were quickly pulled downriver.
Then the whole house moved.
“I’m just concerned with the dogs at this point,” Ms. Whalen said, tearing up at the memory of her fear for their safety.
The house moved three times, getting caught initially on small trees that didn’t hold it. Eventually it anchored between two larger trees. The building was tilted at an angle with the living room elevated skyward.
It was at this point that Ms. Whalen could see the dogs on the couch. It provided some comfort that they were not hurt. The current was still too strong to attempt a rescue and she worried the house would get dragged further along.
The couple finally left to sleep at a friend’s house. “But as you can appreciate,” Ms. Whalen said. “I got no sleep.”
Rebuilding
“We had a dream of getting out of the rat race in the city and living more sustainably, close to nature,” Ms. Whalen said. “And so, for the past several years, we kind of had a philosophy of build as we go, so we weren’t incurring debt into retirement.”The couple is semi-retired, and when they were not at work, they were working their land and tending their animals, or simply enjoying their “little paradise.”
“Our little paradise now looks like a post-apocalyptic wasteland,” Ms. Whalen said. “We will be rebuilding, but the task feels daunting.”
They will rebuild on higher ground.
“Nadine and Jeff are the type of people who never ask for help but are always there to help their friends and neighbours,” Mr. Pardy wrote on the GoFundMe page.
Despite sometimes feeling overwhelmed, Ms. Whalen tries to look on the bright side—they made it out with their lives.
The flood put priorities into perspective, Ms. Whalen said. Life is first and foremost, and so many things that seem important under normal circumstances have become trivial now that the essentials are gone, she added.
“The things I was preoccupied with on Friday [before the flood] all of a sudden weren’t important anymore,” she said. “You appreciate what’s most important.”
