Nancy Shea is showing The Coast through her Brussels Street home on an April morning when the noise begins. It starts with a muffled clatter, filters through the walls of the 1940s-era two-storey clapboard with a low-register hum and lasts for the rest of the 40-minute visit. With the windows closed, it sounds like a vacuum or generator running in a distant room. Open them, and the noise falls somewhere between a garbage truck idling and a leaf-blower running next door.
The routine is a familiar, if inconvenient, one for Shea and her husband, Richard: It has permeated most of their days and nights from August through April since 2016, they say—when the next-door Halifax Curling Club underwent renovations to repair a caved-in roof and updated its cooling and ventilation system. Sometimes, Shea says, the cooling machinery’s noise lasts for hours; other times, it lasts for two minutes, only to repeat itself after 30 seconds of silence. In that time, it has also driven the Sheas to the point of exasperation.
“You can only take so much,” Nancy tells The Coast. “Even with earplugs, the noise comes through… mentally, it’s been absolutely fatiguing.”
More than 30 years since they moved into their south end home, the couple has filed a civil lawsuit against the Halifax Curling Club, claiming harm to their property and personal enjoyment. After years of failed efforts to have the curling club address the noise—efforts, Shea says, that began with goodwill and assurances from the club that things would change—the Sheas are ready to make some noise of their own.
How it began
There has not always, to borrow a curling term, been trouble in the house between the Sheas and the Halifax Curling Club. The club itself has been a fixture of South Bland Street (on which the club’s front door faces) since 1824. It’s the “oldest active curling club in Canada,” according to the HCC’s website—and home to the first Brier-winning team in 1927. Nancy and Richard have lived next door to the club since 1985—and for most of those years, Shea tells The Coast, they’ve enjoyed good relations as neighbours. In 2015, when the curling club’s roof caved in, the Sheas offered the HCC to plug into their electricity.
“We didn’t really have any issues with them,” she says.
The relationship soured, Shea says, after the curling club rebuilt its roof and upgraded the cooling system required for its ice pads—which, located near the club’s Brussels Street end, borders the Sheas’ driveway and backyard. At nearly 14 feet tall, it rises over their backyard fence and sits 20 feet from their bedroom window. The noise has been so persistent, Nancy says, that she and her husband have moved into their son’s old bedroom at the farthest corner of the house to escape it.
“It’s just a constant,” she tells The Coast. “Some people might say, ‘Well, it could become white noise.’ But it can’t be when it’s going on and off all the time.”
Shea claims that when the curling club was rebuilt in 2015, club representatives told her that noise from the vents and pipes “would not be an issue,” and that the HCC would be holding a meeting with neighbours during the rebuild to keep them in the loop.
“Well, they didn’t do that,” she says.
In the years since, the Sheas have filed noise complaints with Halifax Regional Police, met with city councillors and curling club officials, and launched a Facebook page to bring awareness to their situation. In that same time, Nancy says, the noise from the curling club has escalated. Now, the Sheas are hoping civil action will restore some peace and quiet.
“We tried to do it the right way,” she tells The Coast. “But we realized, you know what? This is our life; this is our home.”
A matter of noise
Ranging anywhere between 70 and 75 decibels, the curling club’s coolant exhaust noise registers somewhere between the hum of a washing machine and the steady rumble of an idling car. It also sits precisely on the cusp of what health and safety authorities deem to be safe for prolonged exposure. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association says that you can listen to sounds at 70dB “for as long as you want” without risk. But according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, noises above 70dB “over a prolonged period of time” can cause hearing loss.
The Sheas’ lawsuit hinges on their right, as citizens, to peacefully enjoy their home. Introduced in 1999, Halifax’s Respecting Noise bylaw prohibits “any activity that unreasonably disturbs or tends to disturb the peace and tranquility of a neighbourhood.” That protection extends, notably, to the noise disturbance of a single neighbour. There are exceptions to the bylaw: Emergency safety measures, festivals, calls to worship, power restoration work and rec sports at neighbourhood parks all have varying noise exemptions. So do telecommunications companies, Halifax Water, natural gas providers, the HRM and construction crews—even if, at 7am on a hangover Monday, you wish they didn’t.
The Halifax Curling Club is not mentioned by name under the HRM’s bylaw exemptions, but its two closest protections would fall under ongoing ice maintenance and the release of “air, steam or other gaseous material” through vents and pipes. The former is permitted by law from 7am to 9:30pm on weekdays and either 8am or 9am until 7pm, depending on if it’s Saturday, Sunday or a statutory holiday. The latter is allowed during the same weekday and Saturday hours, but banned outright on Sundays and holidays. Neither is permitted overnight, when the Sheas say the curling club’s machinery continues to run throughout the fall, winter and spring curling season.
In an emailed statement, HRP media relations officer John MacLeod tells The Coast that police have received eight service calls related to noise coming from the curling club’s equipment since 2016, and that it remains an “ongoing issue for residents.” MacLeod adds that police believe the matter “would be best resolved through HRM by-law services due to the nature of the incidents.”
Thus far, the Halifax Curling Club has declined The Coast’s invitations for comment on the matter.
“Unfortunately, it’s a part of active litigation, so we’re not actually saying anything at this time,” business manager Mandy O’Connor tells The Coast.
The lawsuit
Though the Sheas have filed a lawsuit against the Halifax Curling Club, any court resolution could take years to happen.
“Unfortunately, our court system is really bogged down,” the Sheas’ lawyer, Ray Wagner, tells The Coast. He adds that civil cases aren’t being booked until “2025, 2026.”
For Nancy, the goal isn’t a monetary settlement.
“I want my kids to be able to come home at Christmas and not [worry about] sleeping in their rooms because of the noise… we just want to live in our home the way we lived before.
“What we really want is our life back.”
