I am so sorry to hear. I know how that feels.
This happened to me as well, and you’d think here in Texas with its big talk about property rights and God’s creation blah blah blah… but nope.
I had a big fabulous bee meadow in the fenced-in area next to the as-yet-not-opened-for-the-season community pool. The pollinators were all happy and feeding heavily.
That morning before I left, it looked like this:
https://robgreebon.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Texas-Wildflower-and-Bluebonnet-Images-and-Photos/G0000A5fGuNQLE08/I0000c39mqgvigxA
I came back from an event at my son’s school a few hours later, and my HOA had had it mowed to about an inch tall. It looked so dead. Such a waste. The bees were at a total loss as to what just happened.
Sometimes municipal authorities / HOAs etc. will cite “habitat conducive to vermin” or “sightlines preventing safe pedestrian or vehicle access” or fire hazards, etc., but since the meadow is in your back yard I’m guessing the code enforcement crew had some regulatory cover that enabled them to obliterate successful and important habitat. Outdated, inappropriate or poorly-written ordinances that are dumb on so many levels make life miserable. It’s a short leap from this to why Texans say they hate All Gummint so much. 
However.
I really really like what Ron Finley did in California. It took him a while to get the City of Los Angeles to change its code, but he did it!
He had a warrant for his arrest.
He circulated a petition and got signatures.
He had a court date and public hearing.
It took a few years.
http://ronfinley.com/the-ron-finley-project/
It may be possible to forge an alliance with your local beekeepers, birdwatchers, native plant clubs, etc. and challenge your city’s or provincial law. I realize this is a big project that few of us have time, energy and mental bandwidth to tackle and I would not judge you for whichever choice you make.
A gardening friend advised me to arrange the wildflowers in raised beds, create “bands of color” in a seemingly more organized way (if you sort and plant wildflower by color and size, are they still "wild"flowers?), so that perhaps my HOA would look upon it all as landscaping and not some Horrible Uncivilized Weedy Flower Meadow Infested with Noisy Terrifying Bugs.
Raised beds drain faster and can cost more (both to build and to keep alive) where I live in Texas, so for now, I am having to create small “pocket prairies” on a much smaller scale in less monitored areas. But maybe raised beds in Quebec make more sense. The soil temperature would certainly warm up faster come spring!
