Category: Community News

Alice Cotton is a very excited these days, but also a little bit scared. The market coffee vendor and her partner Peter Stephenson have just signed a lease with the municipality of Tantramar for 200 square feet inside the Sackville Visitor Information Centre (VIC), where they will be opening Café Tintamarre this summer.

“It’s a big step for us to move from little vendors at the Farmers Market to having a cafe,” says Cotton. “We’re very excited.”

The new location will be seasonal, along with the VIC itself. Cotton says the couple is aiming to open the cafe when the VIC reopens for the season on May 1. Before that, there’s an estimated $4,500-$5,000 in plumbing, electrical, and flooring work to be done. In consideration of the leaseholds improvements that Cotton and Stephenson will make at their own expense, town staff recommended a nominal rent of $1 per month for their first season, from May 1 to December 31. If Café Tintamarre returns in 2025, then Cotton and Stephenson will pay similar rent to the other occupants at the VIC, the Craft Gallery and Robert Lyon Graphics.

Tantramar council approved of the lease proposal on April 9, with two councillors, Barry Hicks and Matt Estabrooks, voting against.… Continue

Camilo Mora and Mariana Buitrago are cornering the market on sweet treats in Sackville’s downtown. The couple opened  Sweet Yummyland at 28A York Street just over a week ago, and are moving their ice cream business The Ice Cream Coop into the downtown core next month. 

“I think it…generates a bit of foot traffic for the town, with people coming in to enjoy ice cream, and then they can visit some of the stores around town as well without having to walk as much,” said Mora. 

In past summers, the ice cream stand was set up on Lorne Street beside the Sackville Commons.

Sweet Yummyland is stocked with old fashioned, hard-to-find and unique candies as well as tried and true favourites.

“We’re trying to find sort of different variations of sweets. We also have sort of sugar free candy and sort of some healthy alternatives,” said Mora.

He plans to sell ice cream from the store, as well as from the family’s ice cream stand.

“We just got approval from Council last Tuesday, I believe, to move the Coop to the park,” said Mora.

“So the Coop will be moved to Bill Johnstone Park, it will be located between the bandstand and the library. And if all goes well, we should have it up and running for the first or second week of May.”

On Saturday afternoon a group of kids gathered outside Sweet Yummyland eating sweets.… Continue

The municipality of Tantramar has published a new guide for residents, including a map, a high level budget breakdown, and general information on how the newly amalgamated municipality works. The guide also includes information on council meetings, including how residents can participate in them.

But it leaves out some key information. The guide says that residents are welcome to attend council meetings, but mistakenly indicates that only those who are on the agenda may address council.

In fact, Tantramar’s bylaw allows for two ways that residents can address their council. Residents can request a spot on the agenda seven days in advance, for a public presentation of up to five minutes. Or, residents can “sign in at the door” of a meeting, in order to make a two minute presentation to council.

While the bylaw does not specify a cut-off time for residents to sign in at a meeting, Tantramar staff have established a rule requiring residents to sign in before the meeting is called to order. In the case of the frequent closed meetings that precede Tantramar council’s public meetings, that means residents must show up an hour to 30 minutes before the 7pm start time for the public portion of all regular council meetings.

The omission of information about sign-in-at-the-door presentations comes shortly after one Sackville resident had a disappointing experience in her effort to address council.… Continue

The province of New Brunswick is putting $7.8 million towards three new sites for collaborative care clinics in the province, and Sackville is one. The province says Horizon has allocated $766,000 of the funding to operating the Tantramar primary care clinic which it opened in September 2023.

During a legislative committee hearing last week, Health Minister Bruce Fitch shared the funding news under questioning by Memramcook-Tantramar MLA Megan Mitton. Fitch said Horizon had allocated $1,122,500 to a Sussex clinic, and $4,013,000 to one in Fredericton North. He also said there was about $2 million in the budget for capital improvements for the three clinics. It’s not clear how much of that, if any, would be spent in the Tantramar clinic, which is leasing space in the Tantramar Health Centre, a privately owned building across the parking lot from the Sackville Hospital.

Mitton told CHMA she had advocated for the funding of the Tantramar clinic in the lead up to the budget’s release, and is “hopeful that this will move things along a lot faster.” The current clinic operates just a few days per week with two part-time doctors on staff, one of whom is near retirement.

“People are really struggling and suffering because of their lack of access to health care in our community,” said Mitton.

CHMA reached out to Horizon this week for details on how the $766,000 will be spent, but the health authority wasn’t willing to share any further information.… Continue

There are no shortage of places to experience the total solar eclipse a short drive from Tantramar, like in Shediac or further afield in Woodstock, Heartland, Fredericton and Miramichi. People can watch the near total eclipse from anywhere outside, viewings are being set up at the Mount Allison Gemini Observatory and the city of Moncton is celebrating at Bore Park with live music, a photo booth and free safety viewing glasses (which a required in order to look at the eclipse safely).

Leading up to the cosmic wonder, Sackville residents remember eclipses gone by.

Magali Charron experinced a partial eclipse while in New York City.

“I went to the park to watch it with some special glasses, and I realized that it was much cooler to look on the ground where the tree shadows were happening. And every leaf was in the shape of half a moon, which was super bizarre. And also the birds stopped singing all together. And then when the sun came back, they started singing, which was really moving.”

Jerry Ropson remembers a solar eclipse that happened in 1986, on the same day as his Great-Grandfather’s funeral. “It was the first time I’d ever witnessed or experienced that death. And I was really confused. I thought that when someone you love died, the sun went dark. And then I was telling all my cousins that the sun was going dark because we were burying our great grandfather.”… Continue

Tantramar staff are recommending hiring a Moncton company to design, build, and host a new website for the municipality.

Ten companies bid on the project, including three New Brunswick companies. Blaze Studios scored highest on two rounds of evaluation, and community and corporate services director Kieran Miller explained one reason why in response to a question from Councillor Allison Butcher at council’s March 25 committee meeting.

“They’re based in Moncton, which as we know, several years ago, had a really tragic shooting incident,” explained Miller. “And they have an emergency messaging option which they created based on that event, because of how difficult it was to share messaging that day. And they now provide it free of charge to any of their clients.”

“I get goosebumps when I think about it,” said Miller. “It was just really meaningful, the way they explained it in their proposal. And that’s just one example of where they had value added.”

Blaze beat out Porter O’Brien on the project, the company who worked on last year’s branding project for Tantramar, along with The Details Branding and Design.

The tender document for the project set July of this year as the desired launch date for the site. It also specifies a mobile-friendly, accessible and responsive website, with an easy to use content management system.… Continue

As council is poised to consider renewing its Climate Change Advisory Committee (CCAC), Tantramar’s climate change coordinator position has ended, with no replacement in sight. Janie Brooks, the most recent part-time climate change coordinator for the town, wound up her work at the end of March.

A permanent and full time climate change coordinator was one recommendation from the CCAC back in 2022, when Tantramar’s first budget was being created by the province. And although Tantramar’s first budget did include funding for a full-time coordinator, the position was never created, because a part-time, temporary funding arrangement through EOS Eco Energy and the New Brunswick Environmental Trust Fund was already in place.

Tantramar CAO Jennifer Borne told CHMA by email that there is still salary allocated for an additional position in the Community and Corporate Services department where the climate change coordinator works, but that position is, “under review for the best resource to support the department.”

Borne went on to say that “in general terms, we have an internal process that we must strictly adhere to with respect to a union environment in order to add positions.”

CCAC chair Doug Bliss was before council in late March to present renewed terms of reference for the committee, as well as a climate priorities plan for the municipality.… Continue