Category: Daily News

Despite some misuse in recent months, both the Sackville Community Sharing Cupboard and its counterpart the Station 8 Community Fridge in Dorchester continue to supply area residents with much needed groceries on flexible schedules.

The new style of food distribution has become a fixture of life in Tantramar. The operations work like self-serve food banks, with food stored and available on site, and people able to come pick up what they need at any time. The lack of tracking and monitoring makes it easy and convenient for people in need, but the model is also prone to occasional abuse. Recently Station 8 (also known as the Dorchester Moving Forward Cooperative) made some changes to its community fridge program, closing it overnight and better defining the region it’s meant to serve.

Station 8 first started their Community Fridge back in July 2022 with a goal to help supply fresh produce, dairy and proteins. An anonymous corporate donor gives two truckloads of food every week, and staff and volunteers working out of the Station 8 headquarters stock the fridges daily.

Volunteer Wendy Keats says the program generally works as intended, and gets lots of use, with supplies dwindling by the end of each week. But there have also been incidents of misuse.

Because the community fridges are located beside the Station 8 office, staff and volunteers have a sense of who and how many people come and go.… Continue

Jason Tower loves his job helping feed and take care of Mount Allison students. Tower has been the president of Local 1440 for 17 years, representing 45 people who work in dining services at Mount Allison University.

But Tower and his members are in for a period of uncertainty now, after having received termination notices from Aramark Canada Ltd., the company that the university has contracted to deliver its food and dining services to students.

The university issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a new dining services contract in the fall, which closed on December 11. Tower says he and his co-workers had heard the process was open, but also that “we really didn’t have too much to worry about, because they were happy with the service they were receiving.”

Then in January, Tower heard Aramark has lost out on the RFP. On February 23, the company fired all its Mount Allison employees effective April 30, saying its contract with Mount Allison was ending on the same date.

The university says its required public procurement process is still not complete, and has not announced who will take over the contract to feed students on campus.

Tower and the members of Local 1440 are no strangers to sporadic work in the summer months. They normally get laid off in April, and then are called back to work events throughout the summer, starting with Convocation in early May.… Continue

The Tantramar region had its second visit from a provincial opposition leader this week when Liberal party leader Susan Holt visited Sackville on Thursday to meet with Tantramar council, tour the Drew Nursing Home, and talk to health care workers. Earlier in the week, Green leader David Coon hosted a town hall event at the Sackville Commons.

Like Coon, Holt’s tour of the province is focussed on health care, which she says will be the key issue in this year’s election, on or before October 21. “Accessing healthcare is the number one issue we hear from New Brunswickers everywhere,” says Holt. “They either don’t have a doctor, a clinic or a primary care home, or they don’t have confidence that if they went to the ER, they would be able to get served.”

CHMA caught up with the Liberal leader after she met with Tantramar council Thursday morning.

“The purpose of the tour is actually to take the pulse on our healthcare system, face to face with people who work in health care,” says Holt. “And because I’m here doing that, I always like to take the opportunity to connect with mayors and councils to really understand what’s going on, on the ground.”

Councillors shared a number of concerns with Holt, including access to primary care and emergency services at the Sackville hospital, concerns over freshwater flooding and the risk of tidal flooding of the Chigecto Isthmus, open access to information, and the state of rural roads.… Continue

“Really the reason for getting around the province is to hear where people’s thinking is, what their experiences are, and what they think should change and would help,” said Green Party leader David Coon on Tuesday night. About 50 people gathered in the Sackville Commons on Lorne Street to hear from Coon and Memramcook-Tantramar MLA Megan Mitton on ‘Healing our Healthcare’.

Coon is on a small tour of the southeast this week, meeting healthcare workers and patients during the day, and hosting town hall sessions in the evening.

Participants shared a wide range of experiences and concerns, from the challenges of working in a long term care facility, to concern over the possible deterioration of trans health care, and the continued use of glyphosate in New Brunswick forests. Many expressed their frustration in not being able to access primary care, or urgent care at the Sackville Memorial Hospital.

“There was so much great engagement tonight,” Cool told CHMA. “I really appreciated people coming out and participating in that way.”

Coon said there are significant reforms needed to help the health care system meet New Brunswick’s needs.

“We need restructuring,” said Coon. “We need to change the way the management takes place, we need to change the funding models, to ensure that we can get actual team-based, multidisciplinary care in the system to take people off the waiting list.”… Continue

April 8 is going to be a special day in New Brunswick, as a rare total solar eclipse darkens the daytime sky. While Sackville won’t be in the path of 100% totality for the eclipse, residents do have one distinct advantage for observing this astronomical event: Mount Allison’s Gemini Observatory.

CHMA stopped by the observatory last week to meet with associate professor Catherine Lovekin, and find out more about what to expect on April 8.

To call the upcoming eclipse a rare event is an understatement, says Lovekin. “The last total solar eclipse that was visible in New Brunswick was in about 900 AD,” says Lovekin. “It’s been more than 1000 years. So this is a really, really exciting thing.”

While the path of totality stretches across a wide swath of New Brunswick, Sackville sits just outside that path. “We’re going to get about a 99% total eclipse,” says Lovekin, “which means it’s still going to be amazing and really cool to see, but we’re not going to have that period when the moon is completely in front of the sun, and it blocks out enough of the sun’s light that you can see the corona.”

There might also be some obstacles to a clear view of the eclipse, says Lovekin. According to historical weather records, April 8 has been cloudy about 80% of the time in Sackville.… Continue