The Antigonish Doughnut Challenge

How One Invisible Line Divides and Defines Antigonish

What do we mean by the Antigonish Community? Where does it boundary lie? And its spirit? Who all live here? What is it’s history? And present? Here is a short video that does a decent job capturing some of the answers.

Antigonish is a community that shares a lot—hospital beds, grocery aisles, potholes, and theater tickets. But there’s one thing it doesn’t share very well: governance. At the heart of this paradox is a fuzzy but consequential line—where the Town ends and the County begins.

That invisible boundary isn’t painted on the roads or marked with a sign. But it shows up in snowplow routes, sewer hookups, and tax bills. It splits neighbourhoods, budgets, and, occasionally, conversations. Welcome to the Doughnut.

The “Donut” is the increasingly dense, suburbanizing ring of physical developments surrounding the Town. Hundreds of homes and dozens of businesses in this area receive Town water, sewer, and fire services—but are officially in the County. They pay property taxes at around $0.85–$0.88 per $100 of assessed value, compared to $1.30 in the Town. That’s a nearly 50% difference in mill rate for homes that often enjoy the same services. Some of these county homes do pay additional charges for street light, fire dept and sewer but those still do not add up to the rate that a home next door in town is paying.

In some cases, the irony is more than figurative: there are homes where the kitchen sits in the Town and the garage is in the County. One plow stops at the front step; another clears the driveway. Garbage and recycling trucks sometimes pass each other in the same cul-de-sac. The line in the sand is invisible, but the effects are very real.

And then there’s power. The Town of Antigonish owns its own electrical utility—one of only six in Nova Scotia—which serves not just Town residents but over 400 County households and businesses in the Donut. In 2024, the utility generated roughly $1.3 million in net surplus, a portion of which supports Town infrastructure and operations. The County pays standard rates but doesn’t contribute to maintaining the grid it partly relies on. Meanwhile, infrastructure costs—poles, transformers, maintenance—keep climbing.

RCMP service is another paradox. The Town pays roughly $2.1 million annually for policing for .35% of area, while the County pays about $1.6 million, rest of 99.65% of Antigonish County. The kicker? They’re both served by the same detachment. But because of a federal subsidy for rural policing, the County gets a discount the Town doesn’t qualify for. The Town ends up paying about $535 per resident; the County, closer to $250.

Public institutions don’t help balance the scales. St. Martha’s Regional Hospital is a vital regional resource located in the Town. It employs over 800 staff and serves residents from across the County and beyond—but pays no property taxes. The same is true for St. Francis Xavier University, which employs 1,000+ people, operates extensive infrastructure, and even runs a hotel. The university contributes economically in many ways, but it does not contribute to the municipal tax base.

Schools, too, are shared but skewed. The high school is located in the Town, while the junior and middle schools are in the County. Thousands of students and hundreds of staff travel across that invisible border daily. School buildings, buses, and associated costs are provincially managed, but the impact on roads, sidewalks, policing, and snow removal lands locally.

Then there’s the Antigonish Farmers’ Market—perched right on the border, unsure which side it officially belongs to. Like so many community hubs, it thrives because of the flow of people, not because of boundaries. And yet, infrastructure funding, maintenance, and signage policies still depend on which side of the line you're standing on.

And let's not forget the rural–urban tax base. Many of the 1,000+ farms and woodlots in the County pay very little municipal tax (some as low as $50 a year) but hold significant sway in governance discussions—understandably cautious about any change that could raise their rates. At the same time, those same rural areas increasingly benefit from roads, schools, healthcare, and services concentrated in the Town.

In total, the Town serves over 5,000 people within its borders—but the real daily footprint is closer to 12,000. The County surrounds the Town, and yet the two operate under separate councils, separate budgets, and largely separate planning frameworks. The Province maintains County roads at a cost of roughly $22,000 per kilometer—a figure the Town cannot match for its own roads without taxing residents heavily.

So what do we do with all of this? Some call for merger; others resist. But maybe the point isn’t to redraw the map overnight. Maybe the answer lies in experimentation—a shared “Donut District” where common-sense collaboration can happen.

Imagine a Donut District as a transitional zone: where zoning is adapted for realistic mixed-use growth (not legacy rural), where housing permits are streamlined, and where water, sewer, power, and road investments are coordinated. A place where future daycares, transit routes, clinics, and even business incentives are jointly planned and funded—based not on historical boundaries, but actual need.

Now imagine more: a jointly designed recreation centre, an expanded community arts space, a new Bauer Theater, a transitional housing facility, and perhaps even a dedicated emergency management hub that allows for climate-resilient response planning. Community gardens that don’t stop at the County line. Active transportation corridors that serve even more people in the county, not just jurisdictions. Solar energy projects and green infrastructure investments that feed into the Town-owned grid not dependent on Nova Scotia power. These ideas aren’t far-fetched—they’re already in bits and pieces in the minds of local leaders, citizens, and organizations. We just haven’t put them in one sandbox.

And the best part? The sky’s the limit. Once we free ourselves from the idea that this is a zero-sum game of Town vs County, a world of shared possibilities opens up. New housing models, small-scale local businesses, public parks and trails, coordinated planning that meets our changing demographics—a town full of professors, healthcare professionals, families from the Philippines, India, Nigeria, Ukraine, Mi’kmaw residents, African Nova Scotians, and settlers alike. Aging families that wish to shift to town and young families that can’t afford a home in town but may be, can do in the county. Large woodlots that can convert partly into local food farms. We’re already here. All of us. The question is: are our systems?

Maybe a donut isn’t the final answer. But it’s a deliciously imperfect place to begin—an experimental zone where fairness, equity, inclusion, and transparency can be co-created. Where difficult issues are not avoided but worked through. Because if we don’t begin, the paradoxes are only going to grow—and eventually, the whole thing might go stale.