On today’s show, Mount Allison Politics professor Mario Levesque is calling on Mount Allison, and all other Canadian universities, to step up their game when it comes to campus accessibility. Levesque says that if Mount Allison administration prioritized the goal, the school could make more progress on access to its buildings and facilities, and pitches a fifteen year target date for an accessible Mount Allison, to coincide with the school’s 200th anniversary.
Plus in briefs, Alert Ready system to be tested today, New Brunswick releases its Primary Care Action Plan, and Dr. Andrea Morash to receive 2024 Tucker Teaching Award. … Continue
Image distributed by the RCMP featuring seized materials for Sackville residence on November 22, 2023.
A Sackville man was sentenced to a total of seven years in prison on Monday, for three sets of drug and weapons crimes dating back to April 2021.
39-year-old Colt LeBlanc was in a Moncton courtroom, where he agreed to facts laid out by federal and provincial Crown prosecutors, outlining three separate search and seizure incidents in 2021, 2022, and 2023.
LeBlanc’s sentence also includes a 10-year prohibition on possessing weapons, a DNA test, and the forfeit of more than $155,000 in cash that was seized by police during the incidents.
LeBlanc’s lawyer Michel Des Neiges said his client had spent most of his life without troubles. Des Neiges said LeBlanc, “had a pretty normal childhood” and that he, “did well in school, and played sports, and was getting along with his young adult life.” But in the last few years, said Des Neiges, “things have gone sideways.”
Des Neiges told the court that LeBlanc was planning to join programs while in the prison system, and intended to seek work as a carpenter once he is eventually released. Des Neiges said that LeBlanc, “does not want this to be dead time for him.”
The judge offered LeBlanc the opportunity to address the court, but he refused. As crown prosecutors read the facts behind his charges, LeBlanc mostly nodded his agreement to the judge.
There were no victim impact statements read at the hearing.… Continue
On today’s show, Colt Leblanc was in a Moncton courtroom yesterday for sentencing after pleading guilty last month to numerous drug and weapons charges dating back to April 2021. Leblanc will also have to forfeit over $155,000 in cash as well as other property seized during three separate investigations in 2021, 2022, and 2023.
Plus in briefs, the Alert Ready system is scheduled for a test on Wednesday afternoon, and five Mount Allison professors have been honoured with Paul Paré Excellence Awards.… Continue
Tom Skabar is head coach of the Mount Allison University Women’s basketball team. He also volunteers his time with the Junior Mounties basketball club. Photo: Tori Weldon
About four years ago, Tom Skabar noticed a gap in the level of basketball being offered to teen girls in the area. So he, with Brad Blenkhorn, founded the Junior Mounties Basketball Club.
“I thought it would be a worthwhile venture to develop a program that kind of forged a connection between the varsity athletes here who have so much to offer and to the aspiring young women who are hoping to be them someday,” said Skabar.
“And then it kind of took off from there.”
The program has three aged-based teams for girls in Westmorland and Cumberland counties. Skabar coaches the under-18 team, co-founder Brad Blenkhorn coaches the under-16 team, and the under-14 team is coached by Keira Dyck and Madison Bennett, who both participated in the program in its early years.
Sykorah Hussey likes the faster pace and longer season of the Junior Mounties basketball league. Photo: Tori Weldon
Sykora Hussey goes to Amherst Regional High School. She plays on its basketball team, and the Junior Mounties U18 team.
“With high school, since we’re [Division Two], the level isn’t as high as (it is) for Junior Mounties,” said Hussey. “We play against a lot tougher and rougher teams with Junior Mounties. So I feel that it helps us build our skill and our mindset better.”… Continue
The Junior Mounties, a not-for-profit girls basketball club, is bringing a longer, more competitive basketball season to athletes across Westmorland and Cumberland Counties. Hear from a founder and a player.
In other news, the Greater Dorchester Moving Forward Together coop’s fundraiser brought out about 85 people to its soupfest, and a new music festival called Yes, Indeedy, I do is happening this month in honour of former Sackville resident and musician Richard Laviolette.… Continue
On today’s show, we talk with graduating Mountie football star Daniel Bell about what it feels like to be headed to a CFL training camp this month. We also hear from Mounties head coach Peter Fraser and director of athletics Jacques Bellefleur about Bell’s hard work and the impact that the Mounties recent success in the CFL draft can have for the football program.
Plus, the Station 8 Community Food Hub celebrates their new commercial kitchen with a Soupfest and Silent Auction tomorrow, and the standoff between the Anglophone East District Education Council and the Minister of Education ramps up. … Continue
A rainbow over the Sackville Community Garden. Photo: Vanessa Roth
Spring is in the air in Sackville.
This week, the Little Plant Nursery and Open Sky Greenhouses opened for the season at their shared School Lane location, formerly Anderson’s Greenhouse. On Saturday, the Sackville Farmers Market will return to its summer location at Bill Johnstone Memorial Park. And on Sunday, the Sackville Community Garden will host its second annual plant swap and sale at its location on Charles Street.
CHMA spoke to garden organizing committee member Sarah Evans, who says that the garden is benefiting from recent changes in the neighbourhood.
“The new water retention pond trail is all behind the garden,” says Evans, “so now when you’re working there, it’s sort of like you’re surrounded by people walking their dogs and their kids… It’s amazing
Evans says garden members are working on improving the accessibility and flow of the site. Work on the retention pond also created a new cleared area where the gardeners are going to try something new. “We’re going to use [it] as sort of a communal garden,” says Evans. “Instead of getting a plot where one person will take care of it, or a family will take care of it, we’re all going to take care of this, whoever wants to can show up, pitch in, and then take some of the harvest.”
The Sackville Community Garden has been at the Charles Street site since about 2008, says Evans, and features about 25 plots where members grow vegetables individually or in groups.… Continue
Education minister Bill Hogan in an online Q&A hosted by the department on Monday, January 16, 2023. Image: Screencap
The Anglophone East District Education Council has agreed to give up its Charter challenge of the province’s Policy 713, if the Minister of Education promises to leave the District’s policy on student names and pronouns alone. But it doesn’t appear that Minister Bill Hogan will take them up on the offer.
On Thursday evening, Hogan reiterated his intention to dissolve the Anglophone East District Education Council, if the council doesn’t immediately stop its court challenge to the province’s changes to Policy 713. Hogan said in an emailed statement that the DEC leadership has “left me no options but to commence the process for dissolution of the Anglophone East DEC.”
In a letter on April 30, Hogan called out the DEC for spending nearly $280,000 on lawyers and experts in its case against the province, and ordered the council to complete a list of four corrective actions, including dropping its case. Hogan gave a deadline of 5pm Thursday.
In early April, the DEC had filed preliminary motions asking for a court injunction to prevent the Minister from repealing their policy and dissolving the council while the court considered their case against Policy 713. At a premliminary hearing on April 15, CBC Moncton’s Shane Magee reported that provincial lawyers told Judge DeWare they would seek to toss out the DEC’s full case, once it was filed.… Continue
On today’s show, we talk with Moncton resident Charles MacDougall, whose curiosity about walkability in small towns prompted him to crunch the numbers from the 2021 Canadian long form census, and come up with a list of seven small towns in the Maritimes where more than 15% of residents mainly walk or bike to work. Sackville is on the list, along with Annapolis Royal, Saint-Andrews, Lunenburg, Antigonish, Pugwash, and Wolfville.
Plus in news briefs: Drug charges are withdrawn against Carrie Ann Sears, while Colt Leblanc awaits sentencing on Monday. And Mountie football grad Daniel Bell has been drafted to the CFL.… Continue
Train crossing the Chignecto Isthmus at high tide near Aulac in November 2015.
Photo taken by Mike Johnson, EMO for Cumberland County.
Memramcook-Tantramar MLA Megan Mitton says a new memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to coordinate work on the protection of the Chignecto Isthmus is good news. “It shows some type of progress to governments working together,” Mitton told CHMA, “but we still need a third – we need the feds to be at the table and part of an agreement.”
The Chignecto Isthmus between Sackville and Amherst is home to the only land transportation links between the two provinces. Parts of the Isthmus are at risk of flooding due to predicted sea level rise and extreme weather associated with climate change.
The new MOU says that the two provinces will take on “pre-construction activities to ensure readiness” for one or a combination of the options outlined in a 2021 engineering study. The work outlined in the MOU includes:
Data collection
Preliminary design
Final design
Indigenous consultation
Regulatory work
Stakeholder engagement
Land acquisitions
New Brunswick Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure, Richard Ames told Mitton in April that the province has allocated $750,000 in this year’s budget to go towards that work. Ames also said the province has requested $650 million from the federal government to complete the project.
Last July, New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs and Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston announced they would apply to the federal government’s Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund, which could cover half the project cost.… Continue
