This commentary was first published by the Halifax Examiner on June 16, 2025.

On May 2, 2025, the Canadian Geographic published a heart-warming tale, initially headlined, “From fishing to rockets — Canso, N.S. could be entering the space race: U.S.-imposed tariffs could tip the scales on a proposed spaceport near Canso, N.S.”

This is the quaint start to the story:

Nestled on the northeast coast of Nova Scotia is Canso, a town of 71,000 known for its lighthouses and incredible fishing. But the region, located on the traditional lands of the Paqnkek [sic] Mi’kmaw Nation, may soon have another claim to fame — as the home base for an active spaceport.

Maritime Launch Services wants to launch Canadian-made rockets over the Atlantic Ocean, sending satellites around the poles or over the equator as needed. While these plans remain at an early stage, the community is already preparing to host the initial influx of staff who have arrived to oversee the construction and early development of its facility.

The story is about the wannabe spaceport that Maritime Launch (MLS) has been telling anyone who would listen – for years now – that it plans to build in Canso, so it can launch rockets into orbit from this easternmost point of mainland Nova Scotia.

The article quoted MLS CEO Stephen Matier, who pledged “MLS could launch its first orbital mission as soon as 2026, providing Canadian companies a sovereign solution to send their satellites to space.”

Spaceport fueled by media hype and fumes

The Canadian Geographic article is just the latest of many media fluff and puff pieces that rehash phantastic MLS claims about Matier’s spaceport project in Canso.

MLS has benefited from a lot of beyond-credulous reporting from Space Q. Already in 2017, Space Q was repeating MLS claims that the company planned to begin construction of the spaceport in May 2018.

In 2023, the Globe and Mail hosted an hour-long webcast featuring Stephen Matier, who was not once challenged or fact-checked. The Globe and Mail webcast, called “The Space Economy: What could the commercial space age mean for Canada?,” was sponsored by none other than MLS.

Related: Maritime Launch Services buys itself an hour of PR from The Globe and Mail

Such reporting lends credibility to Matier’s boasts about the MLS spaceport project, as does the support from credulous politicians.

Some major political figures showed up for the launch of a small student rocket in the summer of 2023, including Canada’s former defence minister Peter MacKay, Nova Scotia’s former premier Stephen McNeil, the province’s then minister of education and early childhood development Becky Druhan, Progressive Conservative MLA Greg Morrow, and the director of the Canadian Space Agency.

Related: No billionaires killed in Canso rocket launch

The author of the Canadian Geographic article, Elizabeth Howell, associate editor of MLS-media-cheerleader-in-chief, Space Q, wrote a gushing piece about the student launch headlined “MLS, space community celebrates [sic] debut student rocket launch at Spaceport Nova Scotia.”

Canso’s citizen fact-checker

But the May 2, 2025 Canadian Geographic article making the spaceport sound like a done deal, and riddled as it was with factual errors, was a step too far for Jim Geddes, a member of a citizen group called Action Against the Canso Spaceport, and fact-checker extraordinaire.

Canadian Geographic is a publication of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and it reaches 4.1 million readers per month.

In recent years, Geddes has spent a great deal of his own time researching MLS, its finances, its plans, and Matier’s grandiose claims to the media and to governments.

Related: Opposition to Canso spaceport grows

When Geddes read the May 2 article, he immediately went to work counting all the ways it was wrong or misleading, and he sent his list to Canadian Geographic editor-in-chief, Alexandra Pope.

Canadian Geographic took the article down.

Then on June 5, the article went back up, with a note that it had been updated.

First you see it, then you don’t, then you do

The article had been tweaked, and a few of the errors eagle-eyed Geddes had pointed out to Canadian Geographic had been corrected. But many of the errors remained.

Here are the new opening paragraphs, with changed bits in bold.

Nestled on the northeast coast of Nova Scotia is Canso, a town of around 800 known for its lighthouses and incredible fishing. But the region, located on the traditional lands of the Paqtnkek Mi’kmaw Nation, may soon have another claim to fame — as the home base for an active spaceport.

Maritime Launch Services wants to launch Canadian-made rockets over the Atlantic Ocean, sending satellites around the poles or over the equator as needs require. While these plans remain at an early stage, an initial influx of staff have already arrived to oversee the construction and early development of its facility.

Many errors remain

On June 9, Geddes noticed the article had reappeared on the Canadian Geographic website. He immediately wrote again to Pope:

I recently became aware Elizabeth Howell’s article “From fishing to rockets — Canso, N.S. could be entering the space race” is back on your website. This time, it has a new headline, “Is a Canadian rocket launching facility on the horizon?” and a new tagline. It indicates it’s the original article updated on June 5. This is far from an update. Some of the many errors were corrected, but the corrections were not noted. Sadly, there are still many errors in this version of the article. These were all pointed out to you in my previous email.

Geddes listed 11 errors remaining in the updated article, from the minor to the more serious. Among them:

• Canso ceased to be a town January 2012 and as of July 2012 was amalgamated into the Municipality of the District of Guysborough.
• Canso is known as the oldest fishing port on mainland North America and home of the Stan Rogers Folk Festival. It is not known for its lighthouses and incredible fishing.
• As of today, nobody has arrived in Canso or anywhere in the local area to oversee “the construction and early development of its facility.” There has not been any construction on the site for 2 years.
• The environmental assessment was approved with many conditions. These were to be met before the project could commence. The decision did not “direct that the company provide details”. The decision directed MLS to complete the required conditions. There are still conditions that have not been met to enable the spaceport to operate.
• The government is not “streamlining” launching regulations. There are no regulations nor have there ever been for orbital commercial launches. They are creating launch regulations.
• MLS’ single suborbital launch [in 2023] was a university club launch of a 1.5m rocket which MLS hosted. This launch did not go as planned. There is conflicting reporting if any of the rocket was actually recovered. Matier has been talking about a first orbital launch since before 2020.
• The caption under the test pad picture states there are 3 pads for lease. This is not correct. As of today, their launch site consists of a gravel road and a 25 x 35-foot concrete slab, aka a test pad. There are 2 weigh scale plates being used as a temporary bridge, and there are two 20-foot Sea Cans on the site … The gravel road leading out into the marsh is Spaceport Nova Scotia.

Geddes provided Pope with a photo he took on June 4, 2025 of the Canso spaceport site, which clearly shows there are not three test pads, as indicated in the caption for the MLS photo in the Canadian Geographic article.

Geddes’ email to Canadian Geographic’s editor continued:

MLS is using this article to pump their penny stock. This article has been shared on several investment forums and MLS has shared it as well with their stock symbols. Once again, has MLS contacted you or the author to bring your attention to the errors? They are obviously well aware of the contents of this revised article but don’t seem to care about all the errors contained in it.

At the very least the article needs to be removed with a disclaimer stating it was not factual. Your readers, the local residents, investors, and general public deserve an apology.

Article taken down down ‘permanently’

I contacted Alexandra Pope to ask why the article had been put back on the Canadian Geographic website with errors in it, why changes were not noted as “corrections” so readers would know it had been altered, and whether Canadian Geographic or the author had received any compensation or donation from MLS for the article.

Pope sent this reply:

The original version of the story did not meet Canadian Geographic’s editorial standards (contained numerous factual errors) so it was taken down pending a fulsome fact-check. Given the regulatory complexity of and sensitivities around the proposed space port, which we were not aware of when we assigned the story, we have decided to take the article down permanently. We may revisit the topic in future with a different approach. Neither Canadian Geographic nor the writer received any compensation or donations from MLS or any other entity for this article.

The updated version of the article, “Is a Canadian rocket launching facility on the horizon?”, is available on the Wayback Machine.

Nova Scotia govt largesse for MLS

Misleading articles with false claims about the Canso spaceport are not the only things about MLS that get under Geddes’ skin.

Geddes is also frustrated that Matier’s company continues to qualify for generous tax credits with Nova Scotia’s Capital Investment Tax Credit (CITC) program.

In 2023, the province approved a tax credit for MLS worth $13.2 million, and a year later, another $7.3 million. However, MLS can only be reimbursed with this tax credit after it spends a great deal of money to build or buy whatever it told the CITC it would be doing in its “A” application, and fulfilled all the glowing promises it made about the benefits of this expenditure.

To date, MLS hasn’t done so.

In an email, Geddes pointed out that MLS has not spent the money related to the projects for which it qualified for the tax credits, because it hasn’t had the money to do so.

Collecting tax credits

On June 6, 2025, MLS qualified for yet another provincial tax credit, this time for $10.5 million.

MLS announced this latest tax credit as if it were actually cash in hand that the company would be using “for an additional small launcher launch pad,” which would be “an essential addition to support the company’s growing roster of global launch clients.” The MLS press release continued with this bit of gobbledygook:

The approval awarded to Maritime Launch will facilitate the establishment of highly specialized commercial space infrastructure and enhance Canada’s sovereign space capabilities. This approval builds upon prior support from the Province under the CITC program.

And then this hyperbolic nonsense:

“This support from the Province sends a clear message to the global space industry that Nova Scotia is open for business,” said Stephen Matier, President and CEO of Maritime Launch. “With the help of the CITC, we are building the foundation for Canada’s commercial space sector, bringing jobs, innovation, and global investment to rural Nova Scotia and sovereign launch capability to Canada.”

The real story: MLS is broke

Media outlets picked up on this story and spread it far and wide. Headlines like this one suggested actual progress was being made on the spaceport: “Work by Maritime Launch Services to Develop a Spaceport near Canso Remains on Schedule.”

All these naive media reports miss the real story: MLS is broke. Its audited financial statements, available from Canadian Securities electronic filing portal here, show that at the end of 2024, MLS had about $70,000 in cash.

That’s not exactly the kind of money MLS would need to build much of anything, or even pay Matier his hefty salary.

The independent auditors had this to say about MLS and its viability:

At December 31, 2024, the Company has insufficient sources of operating cash flows to meet its ongoing needs. The shortfall in operating cashflows have been funded from the issuance of share capital, convertible debentures and the exercise of warrants and as such, the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern is dependent upon the ability to obtain financing to be able to secure adequate bonding for future projects. It is not possible at this time to predict the outcome of these matters. The Company incurred a net comprehensive loss of $6,216,547 for the year ended December 31, 2024 (2023 – total comprehensive loss of $4,400,764 for the year ended December 31, 2023). As a result, there is material uncertainty that may cast significant doubt as to whether the Company will have the ability to continue as a going concern.

Another launch in the fall of 2025?

It’s now six years since MLS received environmental approval for its spaceport. At that time, the project was described this way:

The purpose of the proposed project is to construct and operate a private commercial space launch site that provides rocket launch services to clients. The project is located approximately 2-3 kilometers south of Canso, Guysborough County, Nova Scotia. A medium class orbital launch vehicle designed by Yuzhnoye SDO in the Ukraine, will transport satellites into orbit. A maximum of 8 launches per year with associated pre-flight activities such as mission rehearsals, is planned. The main project components include a launch control center, as well as a horizontal integration facility and a vertical launch area which are connected by a transportation route. The transportation route is approximately 2.4 kilometers in length, including a road and a railway. The construction of the project is scheduled to commence in 2019, with the first launch planned for 2021.

Six years later, much has changed.

Former Premier Stephen McNeil, whose government gave MLS environmental approval for the spaceport project, has now joined the company’s advisory board.

Another former provincial public servant who was handling the MLS file while he was on the public payroll also joined the company. MLS doesn’t get around to mentioning this on its website, but its recently retired Chief Operating Officer, Harvey Doane, came to the company in 2021, directly from his position as “business development executive” with the Crown corporation, Nova Scotia Business Inc. (now Invest Nova Scotia).

Related: Canada doesn’t have regulations for launching rockets, but the government says it will ‘enable’ Canso spaceport anyway

No more magic Ukrainian rockets

But the biggest changes have to do with MLS’ plans for the spaceport and the rockets it said it would be launching into space. Gone are the plans to launch Ukrainian rockets; Russia’s invasion of Ukraine put an end to that rocket dream.

Related: Maritime Launch Services and its private/public servants

Related: Nova Scotia’s next dystopian tourist destination: The Moms Gone Wild Memorial Spaceport

As Bousquet reported in the Halifax Examiner in 2024, “with no magic Ukrainian rockets available, MLS has reinvented itself as an ‘airport model’ for launching rockets — companies can now bring their own damn rockets to Canso and we’ll launch them for them.”

Fantastical tales go round … and round

In the Canadian Geographic article that has now been permanently taken down, Matier said MLS would launch its first orbital mission by 2026. MLS is also boasting that it plans to launch two sub-orbital vehicles in the fall of 2025.

But, as Geddes points out, when it comes to Maritime Launch and  its spaceport project in Canso, much of the media coverage looks more like science fiction than serious journalism.

Geddes summed up his thoughts and questions about MLS and the way it presents itself and its spaceport project to investors and governments, and what exists on the ground: “They are valuing their spaceport under construction at $14 million. It is being built on a piece of leased crown land. So far it is some gravel road, a small concrete slab, and two 20-foot Sea Can containers.”

Geddes is still trying to have Canadian Geographic issue an explanation to its readers, to correct the false narrative, which perpetuates the hype about the spaceport that, in his view, is a “boondoggle in the making, and potentially very dangerous.”

Here is Geddes’ most recent plea to Pope for an official retraction of the Howell article on the Canso spaceport:

Unfortunately, the article, as with the first version, has been read and shared many times. The links to the articles are still being shared. Even though the link lands on a 404 page, the title and comments about the article are still being seen on various sites. This has to be confusing for those following the link. Is it too much to ask that instead of a 404 page, the link lands on a page at least containing a clarification statement, “The article has been permanently taken down as it simply did not meet our editorial standards.”, or something similar? Canadian Geographic is a trusted Canadian publication, and we expect more from you.

I contacted MLS with questions about its launch plans, and whether it has fulfilled all the conditions of its environmental approval for operations.

I received no reply.

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