HALIFAX, NS: The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms announces that lawyers will appear in the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia on behalf of Jeffrey Evely starting Tuesday, March 17, 2026, challenging the Province’s 2025 walking in the woods ban.
The hearing is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. AT in Halifax, at the courthouse located at 1815 Upper Water Street, in courtroom 703, before Justice Campbell. Three days have been scheduled for the hearing from March 17 to March 19, 2026. The proceedings are open to the public for in-person attendance, but virtual access will not be available.
The order barred ordinary citizens from entering “woods,” including “forest land and rock barren, brush land, dry marsh, bog or muskeg,” even for no-risk activities such as hiking, while granting permits for industrial operations to continue.
Constitutional lawyer Marty Moore said, “There are serious legal and constitutional issues with the decision of Nova Scotia to completely ban its citizens from being in more than 75 percent of the Province, ostensibly to protect the woods.”
“Banning people from hiking in the woods despite posing zero fire risk, while expressly permitting heavy industrial activities with significant fire risks to continue, demonstrates the lack of rationality and unconstitutional arbitrariness of Nova Scotia’s decision to ban the public from the woods,” he added.
Mr. Evely, a retired Canadian Armed Forces veteran and father of two, was fined $28,872.50 under the ban on walking in the woods in August 2025. Mr. Evely’s legal counsel is arguing that the ban is both unreasonable and unconstitutional and violated Mr. Evely’s right to liberty and security of the person, and the rights of Nova Scotians’ more generally, protected by the Charter.
