Category: Interview

Keagan Hawthorne is putting together six different poetry broadsides, 25 copies each, donated by various poets from the area, to raise money for the Tantramar Literary Society.

While the Tantramar Literary Society is more of an unofficial collective of poets and writers in the area, Hawthorne says it’s very much alive and looking to get more active in public now that New Brunswick is in the green phase. 

The funds raised from broadside sales will be pooled to pay local poets to read their work in Sackville, and host poetry events.

The broadsides are being printed on Hawthorne’s micropress, a large and heavy mechanical device that uses a hand crank to roll paper across inked letters, which he affectionately refers to as “The Beast.” It’s a flatbed proofing press, made circa 1927, originally used for test prints of a newspaper to check for things such as layout glitches or spelling errors.

Now it sits in Hawthorne’s living room, surrounded by filing cabinets full of “sorts,” or lead-based metal letter type, and various broadsides pinned on the walls. 

The poet visiting Hawthorne’s workshop is Amy Ward, who donated her poem “Echo” to the broadside fundraiser before moving from Sackville to Guelph for her Masters degree.

“I lived here [Sackville] for five years, and then when the border closed.… Continue

On July 21st, at exactly 1:07PM, CFTA celebrated its ten year anniversary by playing Annie Murray’s, “Snowbird,” the very first song the station ever played.

The station has modest beginnings, with a small dedicated crew broadcasting from the back of GMC van, and is still going strong.

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Long-time member and current station director “Foxtrot” Lisa Emery has been on the air and behind the scenes for nearly all of those 10 years.

Listen to the full conversation here:

She says CFTA has provided her with “a really fun place to work” and that she loves being surrounded by music, and people who enjoy music, all day long.

Emery is an Amherst native, but says that CFTA has many members from all over Cumberland and the Tantramar, including Sackville and Port Elgin.

She credits the success of the station to the variety of music and programming the station has, along with community involvement.

“We’re an actual community organization and not just a radio station. People help us out with donations, they help us with suggestions. of things to do going forward I always love the public input.”

… Continue

Laura Hunter is one of the original co-founders of Open Sky Co-op, a nonprofit organization that helps adults with mental health challenges and disabilities transition from high school to adulthood.

Now, twenty years later, Open Sky has called her back and she is taking over from longtime former Executive Director Margaret Tusz-King. 

Hunter spent a few months transitioning into the position, and officially started in early July. CHMA gave her a call to see how the transition was going, what she’s all about, and what her dreams are for Open Sky.

Listen to the full conversation here:

Transcript to follow…… Continue

Paul Henderson left Sackville seven years ago to live in the more populated Toronto after he co-found the renowned music festival, Sappyfest, and worked as the Struts and Faucet Media Arts Coordinator. 

By the end of the month, Henderson will have left his home in bustling Toronto behind him to become the new director of Struts Gallery and Faucet Media Centre.

Henderson worked on his own for the past year as a freelance designer, but after pandemic isolation he’s had time to think, and wants to put down roots in Sackville again for a while. 

“I think, like everyone, over the last year and a half or so [I’ve been] kind of reevaluating priorities and what it takes to have a meaningful life and this planet,” says Henderson. “The community of Sackville is a very rich and vibrant one, and we have a lot of friends, and just the kind of pace of life was really appealing. Obviously [with] everyone being so isolated through this pandemic, the importance of social fabric really became prevalent.”

The collaborative aspect of the position was also part of what appealed to him, after over a year of working alone.

“I was really involved with a lot of collaborative stuff [in Sackville], from Sappy to Struts, also Thunder and Lightning right before I left. I was very happy when we moved to Ontario to work on my own things and not be really involved… I probably did experience some sort of burnout.… Continue

The Corner Drug Store held its second mass vaccination clinic at the Tantramar Civic Centre on July 1st. Over 500 people were vaccinated throughout the course of that day, including around 85 walk-ins.

Since the Vitalité clinic that used to operate there is out of commission until mid-July, the Corner Drug Store has been leading the charge to get locals their shots.

With this second mass vax event out of the way, their wait list has decreased dramatically and they can hopefully get to people more quickly.

CHMA called pharmacist Charles Beaver on Friday to see how the clinic went, and what locals should know if they haven’t received their shot yet.

Q: On July 1st, you held another mass vaccination clinic and you vaccinated even more people than last time, is that right?

A: Yes, we did. The Canada Day Moderna mass vaccination clinic, our final tally, unofficial, is 538 doses. It would be within one or two of that number.

Q: You had some walk-ins, do you know how many you had?

A: Yes, we started the day about 100 short. We were late sending out the invitations on Tuesday, so we had about 100 spaces, 15 or so of which were filled through the day by people on the waitlist, and we ended up taking another 85 by walk-ins.

Q: Did you have to turn anyone away? Did anyone show up and you just didn’t have the capacity to vaccinate them that day?… Continue

Last week, the New Brunswick Common Front for Social Justice started a lobby week on behalf of workers in New Brunswick.

Their lobby document outlines several obstacles faced by New Brunswick workers, including low minimum wage, being fired without cause, and pay inequity between people of different gender or race. 

Common Front’s provincial coordinator Abram Lutes says that as of right now, New Brunswick workers have only one act that protects them, and it’s not doing enough.

Here is Abram Lutes discussing what Common Front’s demands are, and how they could help the entire province:

Q: What is this lobby week all about?

A: This lobby week is about our new lobby document Justice for New Brunswick Workers which centers around the Employment Standards Act. The Employment Standards Act is the basic labor law in New Brunswick. It establishes the baseline rights for workers in the workplace and obligations their employers have to their workers. One of the things we’ve learned coming out of this pandemic is that there are a lot of workers, including essential workers, who have the Employment Standards Act as their only legal protection in the workplace. And looking at the Employment Standards Act, there are a lot of rights and duties that are established there. But we felt that there were also a lot of things missing, that workers have been rallying for and speaking out about over the course of this pandemic.… Continue

As the leaves start to unfurl and the sun stays out late, a smorgasbord of secret edible plants is emerging from the forest floor.

Wild food enthusiasts are flocking to the woods, searching high and low for edible delights hidden in plain sight.

Southeastern New Brunswickers are certainly among them, so CHMA contacted several wild food and plant enthusiasts, who share extensive generational knowledge of the practice. 

The first of whom answers a common concern, how do you know if something is poisonous? 

Jessika Gauvin of Enchanted Mushroom Forest has been foraging wild food for over thirty years, and her specialty is (of course) mushrooms.

Her expertise is valued by veterinarians and emergency doctors, and serves as a frontline expert during poisoning emergencies.  

All of this time-sensitive work is done online, in a Facebook group.

“If there’s an ingestion of a plant or mushroom by a kid or an animal, or even an adult who’s a forger who’s eaten something and then either they get symptoms, or they start to get concerned that maybe they had misidentified something, they’ll come to us,” explains Gauvin.

Her expertise, among the others in the Facebook group, is so specialized that Poison Control will often direct concerns to them.

Gauvin provides guided tours around Maritime provinces, where she instructs how to tell the difference between a culinary delight or toxic surprise. … Continue

Since 2002, Canada has celebrated Asian Heritage Month during the month of May.  

Every year since then, Madhu Verma has organized a month-long cultural celebration and education. 

Verma is the founder of New Brunswick’s Asian Heritage Society, and has remained active within her home city of Fredericton and throughout the province for nearly 20 years. 

“Our main goal is education, public education, and also working in the schools on the curriculum,” says Verma. “The Asian population is growing, not only in New Brunswick…I came here, New Brunswick, in 1963 when my husband got a teaching position at UNB. I faced racism and I was very young. So then I started I say, ‘Well, I’m not going to just listen, I should act. What can I do?”

Verma went on to form the New Brunswick Asian Heritage Society and the Multicultural Association of Fredericton. She says her goal is to educate all New Brunswickers about multiculturalism in order to create “one community” based in understanding.

“My goal is that there should not be discrimination or racial hate crimes,” says Verma. “Through education, we could make life better for newcomers and other visible minorities Canadian.”

The Asian Heritage Society usually puts on a cultural exhibition gala at venues such as the Fredericton Playhouse and the Moncton Capitol Theatre. 

During COVID-19, Verma says there will be more online educational components instead. 

The Multicultural Society has chapters in Moncton, Miramichi, and St.… Continue

Ivan Okello, Mount Allison’s Black Student Advisor and Diversity Educator, holds his position with an optimistic vision of the future.

Okello has been with Mount Allison since fall of the 2019, and says his first change was to make programming and resources that centre Black students’ needs. 

“That can be from what it means to be separated from family, or what it means to transition to an academic institution separate from the one a student maybe familiar with. Our Black students needed the resources, personnel, or staff members that they can come to,” says Okello.

“I was thinking of Black students’ needs in the delivery, or in the design, of those [student affairs] programs. I think something as simple as orientation for all students might seem like a small thing, but thinking about the needs for Black students, especially around building community or setting themselves up to be able to accelerate their studies like everybody else was important. For me, it was really working within those models to make sure that Black students have the same level of service, the same level of response, and provide advising to make sure that they’re able to make a well-informed and actionable decisions throughout their education.”

Okello is also a member of Mount Allison’s Anti-Racism, Education, and Response Team, where he plays an educational and supportive role. 

“The Mount Allison Anti-Racism, Education, and Response Team plays a really important role in providing education on campus around matters of racism, racial discrimination, or also other aspects of discrimination, like microaggressions,” explains Okello.… Continue