February 1, 2025 · Posted by Ardelle Reynolds
ERIKA SHEA: Reflecting on the legacy of John Whalley
New Dawn president and CEO reflects upon John Whalley's contributions to Cape Breton. Cape Breton Post, February 1, 2025
New Dawn president and CEO reflects upon John Whalley's contributions to Cape Breton. Cape Breton Post, February 1, 2025
I’ve spent much of the past two weeks noticing all the ways in which the unexpected passing of John Whalley has left a hole in the fabric of our organization, and in my life.
John was universally loved at New Dawn. His laughter regularly echoed through the halls here. And he was my first mate. He was the person I would turn to for a second opinion, share knowing glances with in a meeting, rely on for a deeper understanding of some facet of economic or cultural life in Cape Breton, and go see when I needed to laugh at the absurdity of the everyday.
In addition to all of this, I’ve been thinking a lot about the loss of John, the public intellectual.
In his 20 years as manager of economic development with the Cape Breton Regional Municipality, and his 10 years as vice president at New Dawn, he planted and nurtured the seeds of most of the major policy ideas that have come to characterize life here. And he sought credit for none of them.
John was trained as an economist, and underlying the policy and governance papers he authored was a single question: what does a community need to thrive?
For John, the answer included a sound financial foundation, stable and growing population, regionally appropriate economic drivers, high levels of education, and care for those whose circumstances – poverty, trauma, addiction, disability, illness – pushed them to the margins for some or all of their life.
Following the election of Mayor John Morgan in 2000, as the municipality was wading through the darkness of the wind-up of coal and steel, John honed in on the discrepancies between the constitutional intent of the federal equalization program (comparable services for comparable taxation) and the way in which it was being implemented in practice.
Fairness was important to John and the handling of equalization was far from fair. The resulting fight for equalization in the CBRM was not easy and was not without detractors, but for John, fighting for what was right was as non-negotiable as taking the next breath.
Twenty-five years later, as evidenced in our most recent municipal election, although the issue of equalization remains unresolved, it also remains top of mind for voters, and the one they want to talk about online, in debates, and on doorsteps.
In 2010, John was the first person to speak publicly to the demographic crisis the island was facing. He spoke to council, he spoke to the community, and over time he spoke to provincial and federal ministers, deputy ministers, and policymakers.
Well before population growth was accepted as a necessity for rural and non-metropolitan communities across the country, John was patiently outlining the dangers of prolonged population decline.
He was undeterred in these presentations when his forecasts were dismissed with a wave of the hand and some version of the need to be “more positive.” He was equally undeterred when his proposals for a Cape Breton specific regional nominee program weren’t lovingly embraced by what was, at the time, the Nova Scotia Office of Immigration.
As the international student body at Cape Breton University began to take hold in a big way in 2016, it’s possible there was no one happier about this turn of events than John Whalley. He knew – from the research he’d undertaken – that population growth was necessary for economic growth, but he loved more than anything to talk about the ingenuity, strength, joy, expertise, resilience, and beauty of the people who found their way here.
In his latter years at the CBRM, John was a driving force behind the identification and purchase of the Greenfield site as a critical community asset. As many have heard him say, the community found itself in an exceptionally strategic location in the North Atlantic in an era of rapidly expanding global shipping.
Fewer had the immense privilege of knowing what drove his preoccupation with these 400 acres: the site, under municipal ownership, represented a significant revenue source for future generations. It was important that it be developed, and that its development be of direct, transparent, and ongoing benefit to the whole community.
Complementing this work on the CBRM economy, John was an advocate for free post-secondary education at Nova Scotia Community College (having identified a link between educational attainment and concentrations of poverty in Cape Breton), guaranteed basic income (and the possibility of funding it through the annual dividends earned by the federal government on its CPP investments), and housing as a human right.
When not refining ideas about the island, his other interests included advances in understandings of multiple sclerosis, the socio-economic changes to come as a result of AI, and the need to get clean drinking water to all First Nations in Canada.
There was nothing in any of these ideas that would benefit John personally. He wasn’t seeking career advancement. He didn’t have a financial stake in the Greenfield site. He didn’t need free education or a basic income. He simply wanted the community to find its way to prosperity, and for the people of the CBRM to be the foremost beneficiaries. He quietly dedicated his life to this.
John was an anomaly: brilliant and humble, confident and shy, full of both big ideas and gratitude for the little things like warm spring days, a bowl of seafood chowder, and a nap in the sun.
John leaves behind too many lessons to count. But when I think of the ones that would be most important to him, I think of his reflections on the need to make decisions from a place of principles, the need to have key municipal conversations out in the open, and his deeply held belief that we had made it: that, as a community, we were well on the other side of the hardest years and the future looked bright. Like all of his other insights, in time, I know the rest of us will come to feel this in our bones too.
Erika Shea is the president & CEO of New Dawn Enterprises.