Good decisions and second chances: How Ian Brewster is building safer communities in Nova Scotia
While many of us like to believe there’s a sharp line between right and wrong, Ian Brewster’s experience has shown him that the answer is far murkier. “There are no good guys and bad guys. There are just good guys and bad decisions,” he says.
It’s a perspective forged from years on the front lines of Canada’s correctional system, and one that reminds us how close any of us could be to sitting on the wrong side of a parole officer’s desk.
As a Parole Officer Supervisor in Nova Scotia, Ian has built a career on helping people make better choices the next time around.
He spends his days walking a line most of us would find impossible to balance: on one side, the mandate of public safety; on the other, the fragile and messy lives of people trying to build something better after prison. While he knows the stakes are high, he also knows something many forget: that most people are more than their mistakes, and that dignity and compassion can coexist with accountability.
Ian’s path to parole work wasn’t a straight line. Growing up in Kentville, Nova Scotia, he once imagined himself in a policing career. After earning his criminology degree at Saint Mary’s University, he applied to the RCMP and was advised to reapply later. In the meantime, he tried his hand at other opportunities, at one point even considering a stint in the Alberta oil patch, before applying to Correctional Service Canada almost on a whim. By 2007, he was a parole officer in Calgary, beginning a career that would carry him across the country and, eventually, back home to Nova Scotia.
In his nine years as a supervisor, Ian has seen nearly every facet of parole work: institutional and community supervision, victim engagement, youth outreach, and training the next generation of parole officers. But he resists framing these experiences as career milestones. For him, they are touchpoints in a much larger story about service. Whether it’s mentoring a new officer in a rural office or taking a long drive down dirt roads and multiple ferries just to visit an offender, the work is about relationships, trust, and the small victories that add up to safer communities.
Some victories are quiet but profound. One of his parole officers recently went for walks with an offender who wanted to lose weight, walking the track together and building trust along the way. In another instance, an offender reached out to Ian about a community member who cut in line at a local Tim Horton’s and exchanged offensive and racist remarks. Ian reminded the offender of his progress, acknowledging how he handled the situation better than he had in the past, and gave him credit for a positive choice that could easily have gone unnoticed.
These moments, small as they may seem, are at the heart of his work: helping people recognize and act on the better decisions within themselves.
His commitment doesn’t stop when the workday ends. Since 2021, Ian has poured his energy into Scouting leadership in the Wolfville area, organizing adventures that range from whale watching at Digby Neck to camping at Kejimkujik National Park. He’s taken kids rock climbing, boating, and even overseas, leading a Wolfville troop to an international jamboree in Essex, England. To the young people he mentors, he’s not just teaching outdoor skills but also showing them how to build character, resilience, and teamwork.
It’s the same belief that fuels his parole work: that investing in people’s potential can change lives.
“If certain periods of my life had gone differently,” he says, “I could have been on the other side of a parole officer’s desk. I had supports and opportunities others didn’t. This work is my way of giving back.”
His humility hasn’t gone unnoticed. In 2025, Ian received the John Dunlop Memorial Award from the Nova Scotia Criminal Justice Association, the oldest Justice Award in Canada, and the most prestigious cross sectoral Justice Award in Nova Scotia. It recognizes individuals whose contributions to criminal justice and their communities go far beyond the call of duty. For Ian, the honour was less about personal achievement and more about validation that the quiet, everyday work of parole officers matters.
While he would never call himself a hero, those who work with him know better. He’s the kind of leader who sees potential where others see problems, the kind of mentor who makes time for a candid conversation, and the kind of dad who teaches his kids that life is about the choices we make, and the chance we always have to make better ones.