Category: Front Page

It’s been a tumultuous year in the Mount Allison president’s office. In March, Board of Regents chair George Cooper announced that Dr. Jean Paul Boudreau would not be staying on for a second term. Boudreau took on the top job in 2018 and saw the school through the pandemic.

Then at the end of June, then-Provost Jeff Hennessey took on the position of interim president for a few weeks before announcing that he was heading back to Acadia University in Wolfville, where he was taking over as newly-appointed president. The board then hired a search consultant to help them find another interim appointee while a search committee took on the task of hiring a permanent president.

Then at the end of August, Mount Allison announced it had found someone: Dr. Robert MacKinnon, with a long academic career at UNB Saint John serving as a geography professor, dean of arts, and vice president, agreed to take on the job.

MacKinnon started his one year term on September 1, and recently dropped by CHMA studios for a chat:

This is not Robert MacKinnon’s first extended stay in Sackville. The new interim president of Mount Allison actually graduated from the university back in 1978. “We’ve been enjoying rediscovering Sackville,” says MacKinnon. The town “still has the same feel” as he recalls from his student days, although he’s noted the changes. “Mel’s is closed, of course… and the sub shop that I used to go to is no longer there… But the town is still a beautiful town.”… Continue

You’d never know it by passing down Main Street or walking through the Sackville Waterfowl Park, but nestled in between the two, just off Waterfowl Lane, is the regional office for the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS). That’s where I found Al Hanson and his crew one day last week, cleaning and prepping their airboat to head out on another round of bird banding in the marshy wetlands of the region. Hanson is head of the Aquatic Assessment Unit with CWS, and part of the group responsible for waterfowl management in Atlantic Canada. I was curious about Hanson’s operation because of stories I’d read online about late night, noisy operations in wetlands, so I dropped in to find out more:

The airboat used by Hanson and his crew to get through thick marshland vegetation was built in Florida, and indeed looks like something you’d see in an Everglades documentary, or an episode of Swamp People. But Hanson is not after alligators, he’s after birds.

“We capture the bird, we put a band on it, and we identify the species, the sex, and the age, and then that goes into a an international database,” says Hanson. “Then when a hunter harvests that bird, they’ll report the band. And so we get an idea of what we call direct recovery, which is the number of birds that are harvested in that first season.… Continue

It’s Pride Week in Tantramar, and this past Sunday the Sackville United Church hosted an event to celebrate its anniversary as an affirming ministry, one that proactively includes and affirms 2SLGBTQ+ people. But when minister Lloyd Bruce posted a video showing the preparation for the event online, he noticed a lot of negative and sometimes hate-filled comments start to pour in.

“A group of us gathered to decorate the sanctuary for the pride celebration on Sunday, which we have hosted every year,” says Bruce. “As we finished the decorating, we had a brainstorm… well, let’s make a little video. And so we made a little video welcoming people, celebrating pride.”

Bruce posted the video to the Sackville United Church Facebook accounts on Thursday, and by that evening, “we started receiving some very hateful comments on the video,” says Bruce, “disparaging comments towards LGBTQ-Two-Spirit+ persons, comments that disparage our support of the LGBTQ community.”

Bruce and the church’s office administrator spent “the better part of Friday and Saturday” deleting comments, says Bruce. “Eventually I just came to the point of making a comment on the video and said, point blank, that any and all negative comments will be deleted, because I’m just not entertaining that kind of foolishness.”

“It’s hurtful to us, and even more so, it’s hurtful to the LGBTQ community,” says Bruce.… Continue

Ever since Anthony Maddalena expanded Bagtown Brewing Company to encompass the space next door (formerly occupied by Sip and before that Pi by Crow), he’s been planning to bring food into the mix. That vision is finally becoming a reality, with the debut of Snackville this Friday during the Fall Fair.

The Snackville kitchen will not be your typical restaurant. The kitchen will be open sporadically in the beginning (Maddelena is relying on customers to pay attention to the restaurant’s Instagram for the latest goings-on), and there will be a rotating cast of chefs.

“The whole idea with Snackville is that you’ll find different vendors coming in and using the kitchen and using the space to produce different tasty eats,” says Maddalena. From more elaborate fare to wholesome comfort food, Maddalena expects the menu to be varied. “We’ll try to rotate through different vendors week to week, month to month.” He’s also planning on some in house fare, such as nachos, grilled cheeses, and the occasional pancake breakfast (like the one slated for this Saturday morning.)

This Friday will feature tacos crafted by local foodie Jon Wolfe, and Maddelena is currently putting together a list of future vendors for the space. “I’ve been going to the farmers’ market and collecting all the business cards I can from some of our local food vendors,” says Maddalena. There’s also folks in town with restaurant experience who Maddalena says have expressed interest, though he’s not ready to divulge names yet.… Continue

Sackville’s pride week kicked off last week with a flag raising at the Mount Allison chapel. Though the arrival of Hurricane Lee caused organizers to postpone a parade through town and flag raising at town hall, events will continue this week with events like Queer Prom, a Queer Art Showcase at Struts Gallery, and an event originally scheduled for last year’s Pride Week which was preempted by Hurricane Fiona: the Sackville launch of Len & Cub: A Queer History by Meredith J. Batt and Dusty Green.

Before their planned event in 2022, Batt and Green spoke with CHMA about their remarkable book, based on the lives of Leonard “Len” Keith and Joseph “Cub” Coates, two men who grew up in the rural New Brunswick village of Havelock in the early 20th century.

Green and Batt came across the story of Len and Cub thanks to a local history buff who brought a collection of family photos mostly shot by Len Keith to the New Brunswick Archives, where Green eventually found them. The images show life in Havelock and the region in the early 1900s, and also document the relationship between Len and Cub, by all appearances a happy though covert romantic bond that lasted roughly 15 years. Batt and Green think Len and Cub’s story may be one of the oldest photographic records of a same-sex couple in the Maritimes.… Continue

The town of Tantramar is asking people to prepare for Hurricane Lee by stowing away items on properties, and creating a 72 hour emergency kit. Corporate Service director Kieran Miller says town staff are monitoring conditions and are well prepared for the weekend.  

It’s not clear how much rain or wind the storm will bring, but the timing of its predicted arrival seems to coincide with high tides, meaning risk of inland flooding is increased. According to tidetime.org, the tide at Hopewell Cape (across from Dorchester Cape) will be at its high point at 1:43pm Saturday afternoon, then overnight at 2:00am Sunday, and at 2:18pm Sunday afternoon.  

Hurricane track images released at 3pm Friday by the Canadian Hurricane Centre show the eye of the storm hitting the southern tip of Nova Scotia by about 3pm on Saturday, and then making its way up the Bay of Fundy, reaching the coast near Kouchibouguac National Park by 3am early Sunday morning.

Environment Canada predicts rain starting late tonight, and becoming heavy by morning. The heaviest rain is expected to fall “near and to the left of the track”, according to an information statement issued at 3:38pm Friday, and current projections put Tantramar to the right. The statement also says, “high waves and elevated water levels will be widespread due to the large size of the storm – the most impacted areas are expected to cover much of the Atlantic coast of mainland Nova Scotia and to a much lesser extent, the Fundy coast of New Brunswick.”… Continue

More changes to Fall Fair programming are under consideration in response to a rally announced for the same date and location on September 23 at Bill Johnstone Memorial Park. Tantramar Active Living director Matt Pryde says plans will be finalized next week.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Tantramar council voted to change the route for the Fall Fair parade to avoid Bill Johnstone Park in response to plans for the rally, which appears to originate from a group called Worldwide Demonstrations, who call the event a “World Wide Rally for Freedom 13.0”

Active living director Matt Pryde told councillors on Tuesday night that, “after consulting with the RCMP detachment here, with Sergeant [Eric] Hanson, it’s recommended that we change the parade route to avoid the Bill Johnstone area for that event.” RCMP Sergeant Eric Hanson says it was town staff who recommended the route change, and he expressed no objections. He says he has no specific information on the number of participants expected for the rally.

Bill Johnstone Park is also scheduled for a ‘Family Day at the Park’ on September 23 as part of Fall Fair. The event will feature musical performances in the bandstand throughout the day as well as activities such as fundraising bbqs, face painting, and a petting zoo. Pryde says the town has “a plan for that as well, but we will not be finalizing it until next week.”… Continue

Tonight the Sackville Film Society makes it Amherst debut, with the documentary The League screening at the Amherst Theatre on Church Street.

After more than three decades at the Vogue Theatre in downtown Sackville, the society faced a crisis point this summer when the cinema closed its doors and was put up for sale. The Amherst Theatre is a former Cineplex property now under independent ownership, and put out the call to host the film society for the 2023 fall season.

CHMA spoke with Sackville Film Society organizer Thaddeus Holownia to find out more:

“I know that there’s a lot of excitement in Amherst,” says Holownia. There’s already a contingent of film society members that had been making the trip from Amherst to attend screenings in Sackville, and he’s heard that there are more in Amherst who might make it out now that it’s a shorter trip. He’s also hoping that Sackvillian film-goers will carpool and make it across the border to see the films.

Tonight’s season opener The League tells the story of the all-Black baseball leagues that thrived in America in the first part of the twentieth century. The program of 13 films throughout the fall includes documentaries, dramas, and even a rom-com. While Holownia admits, “not everything is for everybody” he says he finds the film society members are often open to anything. “Lots of people come waiting to be entertained or challenged or whatever, as great cinema shown in a big theatre allows to happen,” says Holownia.… Continue