It wasn’t the first time someone had tears in their eyes after learning what Musgo Rider does. This particular woman was in her mid-70s, had never driven a car, and was facing a major life transition after her husband moved into a seniors’ residence.
“I can now stay in my home,” Jessie Greenough, the Executive Director of Musgo Rider Cooperative Ltd., remembers her saying over the phone. “Because you guys can take me where I need to go.”
Musgo Rider Cooperative Ltd. provides safe and affordable rural transportation anywhere within the Halifax Regional Municipality.
“Transportation is really foundational to life,” Jessie said. “We’re an essential service for our community.”
It’s often overlooked, but having affordable transportation can allow someone to keep the life they know and stay in their home. Or it can allow someone to get a job, or make it to medical appointments, or simply get groceries. There have been many cases where the only contact a client has had with another person all week is with a Musgo Rider driver.
Part of Musgo Riders stated mission is to “combat rural isolation.” The service ends up being about a lot more than just providing a ride.
“We’re the one organization that goes to people’s houses,” Jessie said. “Maybe they come out and they’re not dressed quite properly, or suddenly they’re doing things—because we have clients for years, right—and they’re suddenly acting differently.”
Drivers have recommended a social service that saved a person’s life, or found clients who have fallen and broken bones, or simply provided a compassionate ear. They once carefully dug up and replanted forget-me-nots at a spouse’s gravesite.
When Jessie took over as the Executive Director, she saw the role Musgo Rider played in the community, and wanted to keep it as accessible as possible, even as it struggled financially.
“We haven’t raised our rates since 2013, when I started managing Musgo Rider,” Jessie said. “When Musgo Rider was only six months old, and they had one vehicle.”
They now have nine vehicles, nine drivers, they own their own location and generate their own solar power for the vehicles. This was all part of keeping the service accessible.
“Switching to EVs totally makes sense economically, and from an environmental point-of-view,” Jessie said. “Forty-three percent of our kilometres in fiscal 2026 were actually free.”
Rental space—especially with sufficient parking—in Porter’s Lake is expensive. When it came time to move locations, they knew they needed a place of their own. In order to keep transitioning to electric and hybrid vehicles, they would need space to store and charge them, and they knew solar panels could help offset the cost of the growing fleet.
Jessie was a former board member of her local Community Business Development Corporation and knew they could help.
“Musgo Rider fills a very important need for a lot of citizens in rural areas,” said Chris Atwood, Executive Director at CBDC Blue Water. “They definitely are innovative and looking towards the future and understanding the importance of rural based community transit.”
Jessie found a loan from a bank with a .5% lower interest rate, but chose to go with CBDC instead, because of the known reputation for flexibility.
“One of the reasons that we chose CBDC is that we could pay off lump sums without penalties, which you can’t do with a commercial bank,” she said. “We have now paid off our loan with CBDC—which is amazing—and we rent space to another nonprofit that covers all our expenses. So, we’re basically living rent-free at this point.”
As a social enterprise, every innovative way to cut costs directly contributes to keeping the service accessible and affordable for people who need it most, and hopefully, in small but meaningful ways, make the lives of those in their community better. Even if it’s just with a smile.
“The crankiest, oldest man—he needs your kindness the most,” Jessie said. “We don’t know why he’s cranky. We don’t know his life experience. But we can treat them kindly.”
In fact, Musgo Rider treats “empathetic listening” as a teachable skill. It’s part of the job.
“Kindness cannot be overrated—It really can’t,” Jessie said. “If everybody was kind in this world it would definitely be a better place, and we have to start on the community level. That’s where everything starts.”