Across the country this summer, people are fighting over waterfront access. From B.C’s Gulf Islands to the lakes in Ontario’s cottage country to Nova Scotia’s south shore, beach-loving locals resent the way rich vacation property owners occupy prime land, limiting public access. In Prince Edward Island, one such battle led to a heated debate in the provincial legislature and has become an emotional flashpoint for the whole province.
Here’s the story: Jesse Rasch, a fortysomething dot-com millionaire and investment fund manager from Toronto, is building a majestic retreat almost right up to the shoreline on a 17-acre plot on Blooming Point Beach called Point Deroche—a vast stretch of white sand with a view of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Rasch claims his property is exempt from the area’s setback rules due to an obscure clause in provincial legislation. But a coalition of irate islanders disagree. The affair now sits at the centre of a legal battle that may derail the project and change the rules on how the beachfront is developed in P.E.I. Sarah Treleaven tells this juicy story, with surprising twists and turns, in the September issue of Maclean’s.
—Sarah Fulford, editor-in-chief
