Public Help Needed to Save This Old Tree Retreat from Foreclosure
Some moments, a family carries more than most people ever see. Then there are moments when the weight becomes public because staying quiet would mean losing everything.
This Old Tree Retreats is facing one of those moments now.
What began as grief after my mother died quickly from cancer at 59 has turned into years of legal fear, frozen assets, high costs, and the threat of foreclosure. The home at the centre of it all sits in Five Islands, Nova Scotia. It was my mother’s home. It became tied to trauma, inheritance, bankruptcy, bank debt, court proceedings, and now the future of a small retreat space that has tried to give back to the community.
This is a public appeal for help, witness, pressure, and care.
I am sharing this because I fought the law, and the law won. Not because truth lost all meaning, but because systems often have more power, more money, and more time than the people trying to survive them.
This began with loss, but it did not end there
My mother lived next door to us in Five Islands. She died quickly from cancer at 59. Her death broke something open in me.
If she had not died, I do not believe I would have woken up from the trauma I had carried for so long. I had lived with it buried in my body. My personal health was declining. With the help of my doctor, I found the strength and courage to face what I had not been able to face before.
I reported abuse to the police that went back to Grade 6. At that time, my mother had me retract the statement I had given to the police. Years later, when I finally spoke again, I believed I was doing what the justice system says survivors should do. Tell the truth. Report it. Trust the process.
But the process did not protect us.
The Crown did not listen to me in the way I believe they should have. Others also gave statements about abuse by the same man. Still, the case did not bring the accountability we had hoped for. I was told, and I understood, that convictions in cases like this are rare. I was trying to be a pioneer in a system where survivors often hear that only a small fraction of cases end in conviction.
That reality is crushing. It tells survivors to speak, then often leaves them exposed after they do.
This post is not legal advice. It is one family’s account of legal, financial, and personal harm, shared because the risk has become too great to carry privately.
Retaliation came through the courts
After I reported, my stepfather filed lawsuits against us six times. In my view, this was retaliation. It bruised us financially and emotionally. It froze our assets. It kept us fighting instead of healing.
He knew how the system worked. We did not have the same power.
Court is not only about right and wrong. It is also about who can keep paying, who can keep waiting, and who can withstand the pressure. For ordinary people, legal pressure can become a weapon. Each filing creates another bill, another deadline, another round of fear.
We spent $60,000 in legal fees trying to defend our business, our home, and the community events we offer for free.
That money was not extra. It was survival money. It was repair money. It was money that could have gone into the retreat, into programming, into maintenance, into keeping a place open for people who needed it.
Instead, it went into defending ourselves.
The deepest pain is not only the money. It is watching a system move forward while the human cost is treated like background noise.
The home purchase became another legal trap
I purchased my mother’s home from my stepfather’s bankruptcy. That purchase should have brought clarity. The home was in my name.
But no lawyers or RBC managers disclosed to us, as we understood it, that a mortgage was attached to the sale in only my stepfather’s name. We believed we were moving forward in good faith. We believed the legal and banking professionals involved would make the facts clear.
Now RBC will not negotiate his debt with us in a way that we can survive. Our lawyer told us the judge would likely side with big banks. Three days before court, we were told we would lose, and that immediate foreclosure would begin.
The number now standing over us is $353,000.
RBC's position, as we understand it, is that my stepfather’s debt must be paid by 17 January 2027, or immediate foreclosure begins.
That means the home we fought so hard to protect could be taken because of debt that was not ours in the way ordinary people would understand it. The house was in my name. The mortgage was in his name. Yet we are the ones facing the loss.
This is why public help needed to save This Old Tree Retreats from foreclosure is not just a headline. It is the reality we are living.
What would foreclosure take from the community?
This Old Tree Retreats is not only a piece of land or a building. It is a place where people have gathered, healed, helped, and stood together.
For three years, a community stood with us while we fought. People gave time, care, and belief. We offered community events for free because we believed in creating a space where people could breathe, connect, and find support.
Foreclosure would not only take a property from us. It would take a place from the community.
The loss would reach beyond one family. It would affect everyone who found meaning there. Everyone who came to an event. Everyone who saw the land as a safe place. Everyone who believed this retreat could become something good after so much harm.
When legal systems and banks make decisions, they often count dollars first. But there are other costs that do not appear on a balance sheet.
They include:
The loss of a community gathering place
The collapse of volunteer energy built over years
The emotional harm of losing a home tied to a mother’s memory
The message sent to survivors who dare to speak
The fear that ordinary people cannot win against systems with deeper pockets
The law had nothing personal to lose. The people involved in the system were paid. The bank has process, policy, and lawyers. We have our home, our story, our health, and our community on the line.
Why public witness matters now
I have already sent letters begging people to stand up for me with the Crown. Many did not have the courage. I understand fear. People fear the legal system. They fear being pulled into conflict. They fear saying the wrong thing. They fear power.
Now I have sent letters begging lawyers to fight for us and help find a solution. Some lawyers fear losing. But we are the ones who have everything to lose.
That is why public witness matters.
Public witness does not mean pretending to know every legal detail. It means refusing to let a family and a community be crushed quietly. It means asking fair questions. It means seeing the human harm behind court files and bank demands.
We need people who can help in real ways:
Lawyers willing to review the case and look for options
Advocates who understand foreclosure, bankruptcy, and banking disputes
Community members willing to share the story
People who can speak up respectfully and publicly
Supporters who understand trauma and the cost of institutional failure
Anyone with experience negotiating with large banks in Canada
We need people who are not afraid to ask why a family should lose a home over a debt connected to another person’s name. We need people to ask why disclosure did not protect us. We need people to ask why the only solution offered appears to be full payment or foreclosure.
Most of all, we need people to remember that systems are supposed to serve people. When the process becomes the punishment, something has gone deeply wrong.
This is what we are asking for
We are asking for time, help, attention, and a fair solution.
We are not asking people to ignore the law. We are asking people to look closely at what happened and help stop a devastating outcome before it becomes final.
The immediate issue is the demand for $353,000 by 17 January 2027. Without a workable solution, foreclosure begins. That deadline hangs over everything.
A fair solution could include negotiation, legal intervention, public pressure, review of the property transaction, review of disclosure, or another path that people with the right knowledge may see more clearly than we can from inside the crisis.
What we know is simple. We cannot carry this alone anymore.
My mother’s death woke me from trauma. Speaking up put us on the path of a system that did not protect us. Retaliation through lawsuits drained us. Legal fees damaged us. Now the bank process threatens to finish what the courts began.
We are still standing, but we are standing at the edge.
Saving the retreat means refusing to let silence decide
There is a kind of silence that protects power. It tells people to stay quiet. The case is complicated, because the bank is too big, because lawyers know best, because survivors are tired, because someone else might speak first.
That silence has already cost too much.
This Old Tree Retreats needs people now. Not someday. Not after foreclosure begins. Now.
If you can offer legal insight, community support, advocacy, media attention, or help finding a fair path forward, your voice could matter. If you cannot help directly, sharing the story with someone who can may still make a difference.
We have fought for years. We have spent money we did not have. We have given to the community even while under pressure. We have tried to survive grief, trauma, lawsuits, and a banking dispute that no ordinary family should have to face alone.
The takeaway is painful but clear: when people stand alone against systems, systems usually win. When a community refuses to look away, the outcome can still change.
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