We were all deeply saddened by the sudden tragic loss on November 14, 2009, of our company president and dear friend, Harley Kellock. Harley had a winning personality, a memorable smile, and a warm, kind, and thoughtful nature. Harley was a friend to many. Anyone who met Harley will always remember him. Harley had a passion for renewable energy and its development, was dedicated to completing tasks related to it, and continuously demonstrated boundless energy in the pursuit of his dream of developing wind and alternative energy sources in Nova Scotia. Harley's vision of what these developments could mean for us now and for future generations lives on in Northumberland Wind Field and across the renewable energy community in Nova Scotia.

Following his passing, the board of directors of Northumberland Wind Field Inc. met on December 10th 2009, to share their grief and sense of profound loss. We quickly came to the realization that to honour and respect what Harley had achieved during his time with us, we owed it to him to pool our skills and resources to move Northumberland forward.

During 2009, Harley had worked tirelessly to complete Northumberland's submission of an offering document to the Nova Scotia Securities Commission for an offering of shares. During 2010, the Board of Directors completed the task and went on to have a successful offering in 2011.

With the capital raised in the 2011 offering of shares, Northumberland was able to make steady progress during 2011. By August, 2011, the company had leased land in Avondale, as close as possible to Harley's final resting place near his home in Merigomish, Pictou. A meteorological (Met) tower was erected to measure the wind resource at the site. Those gathered dedicated the Met tower in Harley's memory for all that he had done to grow the company.

When Northumberland Wind Field's wind energy project is built in Avondale in the not too distant future, Harley's dream of producing community-owned renewable energy in Pictou County will be achieved. The Avondale project will be dedicated to him. The company will continue to grow and prosper in his memory with the continued support, trust, and confidence of its loyal shareholders, many of whom knew Harley as a friend.

In 2004, it became known that John "Harley" Kellock was interested in wind energy and its development. Harley was only 33 years old, but he saw the opportunity for investing in the future.

He connected with the right people in Nova Scotia - Brian Watling (now developing wind fields in China), and Dana Morin, a brilliant P.A. graduate. Harley was energetic, creative, productive and a visionary. And though he had a young family and held a position with Sobeys Head Office as a Project Manager, he set out to work at creating what would become Northumberland Wind Field Inc.

In September of 2004 NWF was formed as a community-owned Wind Field under the Community Economic Development Investment Fund program of the Department of Economic Development initiative (abbreviated to the "CEDIF initiative"). And 2005, NWF began raising a pool of capital-money through the sale of shares, with two more share offerings that followed after this.

With Harley's leadership the company grew to 89 shareholders in a very short time.

On November 14, 2009, Harley was lost in a tragic accident, taking away our company president, leader & mentor; a kind & caring, greatly respected, admired & valued friend. For all those within our company it was an honour and privilege to have known and worked with Harley. And with his loss came the question - What do we do now?

After a short discussion that took place during the first meeting without Harley, it was decided the Board of Directors had no choice but to roll up their sleeves and continue moving forward to fulfill the shareholders' trust and to realize Harley's plan for a community-owned wind field.

We quickly came to the realization that to honor and respect all that Harley achieved in the past four years, we owed it to him to pool our skills and to carry our organization forward. Sharon Henderson was elected our new president, Don Butler, our vice president and Tara Morin-Buchanan, our secretary/treasurer. Other directors are Mike Reddick, Bill Teague, Margaret Ann MacFarlane-Leil, and Phil Wyman.

During 2009, Harley worked tirelessly to complete Northumberland's application to the Nova Scotia Securities Commission to have a new offering of shares. We completed the task and went on to have a successful offering in 2011. Northumberland has continued to make steady progress towards achieving Harley's dream.

There are now 48 CEDIFs in Nova Scotia that have successfully closed at least one offering. These Funds, through a total of 91 offerings, now manage over $32 million in assets. The capital of these Funds has been invested by 4,825 individual Nova Scotians (some repeat investors will reduce this number) to be invested in their communities. Interest in the program continues to grow, as evidenced by the growth of new Funds, additional offerings by existing Funds and the amount of capital which has flowed into these entities, especially over the past two years. (April 20, 2009)

In 1993, the Province established the Nova Scotia Equity Tax Credit to encourage local residents to invest in Nova Scotia small businesses. As an incentive, the Province offered a personal tax credit of 35 per cent to encourage investors to participate. The Equity Tax Credit allows equity investment in corporations, co-operatives and community economic development initiatives. In the case of corporations, eligible investments must be newly-issued common voting shares without par value.

The success of the Equity Tax Credit led the Province to develop an enhancement to the program, Community Economic Development Investment Fund's (CEDIF's). In addition to the 30 per cent tax credit available under the Equity Tax Credit, investments in CEDIF corporations and co-operatives are:

• pre-approved holdings for a self-directed RRSP
• can attract investment through community solicitation
• assist, or develop local businesses within the community

Throughout 1996-98, extensive public consultations made it clear that additional sources of funding should be developed from within the community. Communities should be encouraged to take charge of their own initiatives, and retain local autonomy with respect to investment decisions. To be successful, community members must participate in the process, and take responsibility for their own development. Government cannot drive the process.

The use of CEDIF is a new approach that will encourage the formation of capital pools throughout the many diverse regions of Nova Scotia. The tax credits and guarantees offered to investors in CEDIFs, under the Nova Scotia Equity Tax Credit program, should accelerate the pace at which communities develop and implement viable projects.

It is estimated that more than one-third of Canadian households now own mutual funds.

Unfortunately for Nova Scotia, these funds draw far more capital from the region than is ever re-invested locally. Statistics Canada data indicates that approximately $600 million was contributed to RRSPs by Nova Scotia taxpayers, however, less than two per cent of that is estimated to have been re-invested in the Province. This is a problem for communities in two ways: first, it is often difficult to attract venture capital to invest away from their home location, and second, each investment dollar spent in a community circulates through the economy creating a beneficial ripple effect. Most of our investment dollars are benefiting the Ontario economy (through the TSE).

Through the facilitation of the formation of CEDIFs, we aim to increase the amount of capital reinvested in Nova Scotia to 5% by the end of the year 2010.