Four-and-a-half years ago, Gerrie and Jan Dangremond and their two teenage daughters left their home in Holland and moved to New Brunswick in search of a home with more space.
The couple’s younger daughter, Valerie, 16, needed more room to realize her childhood dream of becoming a farmer and owning horses, Gerri Dangremond told CTVNews.ca on Thursday.
“She could never realize that in the Netherlands. It’s way too expensive. Of course, it’s expensive here too but you can come closer to your goals,” she explained in a telephone interview from her home in New Brunswick.
After they arrived in Canada, the family purchased a brown bay mare by the name of Misty and eventually took in another ailing Palomino named Reiner once they had found a property with a yard large enough for Valerie’s two new horses.
“They’re her pets,” Dangremond said. “We all take care of them. They’re part of the family, but Valerie is the one who owns them.”
That space is located in the quaint Village of Salisbury, just west of Moncton, N.B., with a population of about 2,300.
In April 2016, the Dangremond family settled on a beautiful lot with more than five-and-a-half acres with a beautiful old farmhouse, a charming fixer-upper of a barn and a babbling brook running right through the yard.
“We found the house of our dreams in Salisbury,” Dangremond said.
It seemed the Dutch family had found everything they were looking for in New Brunswick. Dangremond hosted guests at the small bed and breakfast she started, her husband drove a truck and their daughters were happy in their new home, especially Valerie and her beloved horses.
That happiness was short-lived, however.
A fence, a zone, and two horses
Only a few days after the Dangremonds transferred their horses onto the property of their new home in July 2016, they received a letter in the mail from the Southeast Regional Service Commission in Moncton, N.B., a planning agency hired by the Village of Salisbury, saying the family had illegally erected a fence.
Dangremond said she immediately phoned the commission and was told by an employee that they didn’t have a proper permit for the fence and that they would have to go to their office to request the correct documentation. The employee then added that the two horses on their property would have to be removed because they are considered livestock and her home was located in a residential zone instead of a rural one.
“I was speechless,” Dangremond recalled.
She was speechless because they had bought their home in Salisbury because of the area’s rural character. In fact, the one-acre property directly adjacent to the Dangremonds’ home is in a designated rural zone, there’s a working cattle farm across the street and another family keeps a horse in their yard a few houses down, Dangremond said.
With the help of their neighbours, the Dangremonds sent numerous applications to have their property rezoned as rural to Salisbury’s village council.
After a year-and-a-half of repeated rejections, the family’s fight to keep their horses continues. They have kept the two horses on their property during this time.
The ongoing saga has captured the village’s attention with local media covering every development and neighbours rallying to support the Dangremonds. A neighbour’s petition calling for the village council to let the horses stay has garnered more than 800 signatures.
“If the village is in favour, we really don’t understand this,” Dangremond said, as she choked back tears. “It doesn’t make any sense. Two horses? It really doesn’t make to sense us.”
Legal battle begins
The latest blow to the Dangremonds came on Oct. 10 when the village council voted against the family’s latest motion for rezoning.
The council argued the horses could contaminate the area’s well water with their urine and that they are livestock rather than family pets, Dangremond said. They also expressed concern that changing the zoning bylaw for one family might lead to more requests from other villagers, she added.
Despite their disappointment, the family had a reason to stay optimistic thanks to the help of two former Liberal MPs from the area. Paul Zed and Brian Murphy, both lawyers, heard about the Dangremonds’ plight this past summer and volunteered their legal expertise, free of charge.
“I spent hours with this family trying to figure it out. I’ve tried negotiating,” Zed told CTVNews.ca. “The mayor and the council just absolutely refuse to talk. It’s kind of like nothing I’ve ever seen in my entire life where they refuse to take meetings.”
Zed said Salisbury’s Mayor Terry Keating and the rest of the village council has rejected his offers to mediate.
“No matter how many times people have tried to approach the village, the village just shuts them down. They won’t speak to them, they won’t give them any information,” he said. “They do everything through lawyers.”
Mayor Keating and Deputy Mayor Shawn McNeil have not responded to CTV News’ requests for a comment on the matter.
“The mayor could stop all of this today,” Zed said. “All he has to do is take a meeting.”
Murphy, the former mayor of Moncton who specializes in municipal law, is leading the legal case against the village council on behalf of the Dangremonds. He said he was initially interested in the story because it didn’t seem to make sense to him.
“Salisbury is a very rural area. It’s very bucolic, it’s very horse-friendly, livestock-friendly, so for a municipality to say, ‘This doesn’t fit within our plan…’” Murphy said. “I don’t understand why they’re not being accommodated.”
Murphy said they filed a judicial review to appeal the council’s decision on Nov. 9 and expects a possible court date in January.
That’s welcome news to Dangremond, who said she and her family are ready for the feud to be over.
“I just hope this is over soon. That’s it and the horses can stay where they belong at home with us.”
