Community News Archives » Page 27 of 178 » CHMA, Voice of the Marshes

Sackville Fire report to remain secret after council votes 7-2 against Phinney motion

Tantramar councillor Bruce Phinney after a meeting on October 10, 2023. Photo: Erica Butler

At Tuesday’s Tantramar council meeting, Councillor Bruce Phinney made his case for the release of a consultant’s report looking into allegations of bullying and harassment in the Sackville fire department, but his motion was defeated in a 7-2 vote.

The report at the centre of Phinney’s request was commissioned in April 2021 and completed in the fall of that year. Although the consultants made a presentation on the findings to council and to firefighters, former Sackville CAO Jamie Burke didn’t release the report, or any portion of it, publicly.

Phinney told council that he asked for a copy of the 20 recommendations made by the consultants, but was told he could not have it. “Why? I don’t know, I have no idea,” said Phinney. “But I feel that we need to see the report to understand exactly what was going on there, then to determine who was being charged, accused of whatever.” Phinney says he continues to hear complaints from firefighters he speaks to, but didn’t offer up specifics. “We need to nip this in the bud,” said Phinney. “We cannot continue to have a toxic environment for [firefighters] to work in. And it’s our duty as members of council to turn around and make sure that we protect the people that are there.”

Mayor Andrew Black took issue with Phinney’s phrasing. “We don’t know that there’s a toxic work environment,” said Black.… Continue

Dorchester’s Freya Milliken gets some recognition with Music New Brunswick nomination

Dorchester’s Freya Milliken has been nominated for Music New Brunswick’s Song of the Year for 2023. Photo: Gail Clarke

Dorchester-born musician Freya Milliken has been nominated for a Music New Brunswick award in the Song of the Year category, for her song, “Wholeheartedly”.

CHMA called her up to find out how the recognition feels, and get an update on her career:

Milliken grew up in Dorchester, and has fond memories of finding her passion for music with help from teachers like Karen Olscamp, Heather Milner and Tanya Dunlop at Dorchester Consolidated and Tantramar Regional High.

After high school Milliken set off for Wolfville, Nova Scotia to study music at Acadia University. She graduated in May, and is choosing to keep calling Wolfville home, with her band nearby and a job she loves.

Milliken wrote “Wholeheartedly” a couple of years ago. “At the time, I was thinking about intimacy and how relationships in our society are often portrayed as being quite shallow,” says Milliken. She wanted a song to carry the idea of “wanting a real connection, as opposed to just something that just touches the surface.” And so a song was born.

Milliken says the Music New Brunswick nomination is “a pretty big step” in her career. “It’s my first award nomination ever, so that feels pretty good,” says Milliken. And regardless of whether or not she takes home the award on October 19, she’s hoping the nomination itself could lead to more exposure and connections that might see her expand her reach as a musician.… Continue

DIY project could provide up to 20 new indoor air filter boxes to Tantramar orgs

Corsi-Rosenthal boxes built by volunteers at the Sackville Commons. Photo: twitter.com/DThom_

A local group is hoping to get more DIY indoor air filters in spaces in Tantramar this fall and winter, and Renaissance Sackville has recommended funding a project to help.

At their meeting tonight, Tantramar council will vote on putting $3200 of the $25,000 Renaissance budget towards producing up to 20 new Corsi-Rosenthal boxes for indoor spaces in the municipality, and refurbishing some of the existing supply.

The boxes are a “do-it-yourself air filtration unit,” says organizer Dave Thomas, constructed from a standard box fan, four MERV-13 furnace filters, some cardboard, and duct tape.

“One of the things that we’ve learned through the pandemic is that in order to protect ourselves from getting COVID, we need layers of protection, and one of the layers of protection is [air] filtration,” says Thomas.

The Corsi-Rosenthal box is named after dean of engineering at University of California Davis, Richard Corsi, who came up with the idea, and Jim Rosenthal, the head of a filter manufacturer in Texas, who first built it. The boxes are a lower cost alternative to portable HEPA filters, which can range from $200 to $500 each for small to medium rooms, says Thomas.

Last fall, Thomas and others started helping to build the boxes for local groups like the Sackville Commons, at a cost of about $110 each, but he expects costs this year to be slightly higher. He’s planning to replace filters in roughly 10-15 boxes this year, and build up to 20 more, depending on costs.… Continue

‘A bit of a bumpy start’ as EV drivers welcome new Sackville fast charger

Sackville resident Lucas Morneau at Tantramar’s new DC fast EV charger. Photo: Erica Butler

Downtown Sackville has a new fast EV charger. The FLO brand charger which is connected to NB Power’s eCharge network went live on September 21 in the parking lot between the post office and Goya’s Pizza in downtown Sackville. About 25 different EVs have successfully charge since then, says Corporate Services Director Kieran Miller. Unfortunately, roughly 25 other potential users were unable to connect to the charger. Miller says the project has “had a bit of bumpy start” with reported errors from some users, but the town is “working with FLO to get those issues resolved.”

“It’s a bit of a mix of people having an issue versus people being able to successfully charge,” says Miller. “It’s definitely new technology for us, so there’ll be some growing pains as we onboard it.” Miller says she hopes users will be patient, and inform the town if they encounter any issues.

People connecting to the charger will pay for their charge through the NB Power eCharge network, but the charger is owned by Tantramar, and so net revenue, after covering the cost of the power, will come to the town. Tantramar set the rate at $15 per hour of charging, the same rate used at other eCharge network chargers.

Miller says that usage data available to the town doesn’t show where drivers are coming from, but at least one of the potential users is a local EV owner who met with CHMA downtown to talk about the charger and his experience owning an EV:

Sackville resident Lucas Morneau has owned his EV since 2022, and unlike many EV owners, does not have his own home charger, instead relying on public charging networks including DC fast chargers like the one just installed downtown, and level 2 chargers like the one Sackville installed at the Visitor Information Centre (VIC) in 2014.… Continue

Local medical first responders are back on call in Dorchester and Memramcook

After nine months, Ambulance New Brunswick has listened to local authorities and will return to the practice of dispatching medical calls to the twelve fire departments in the province trained as medical first responders. Dorchester Fire Department and Memramcook Fire Department are two of those twelve, and the news has been welcomed in both communities.

Dorchester Fire Chief Greg Partridge says he is “very happy for our community, very happy for the province,” and is hoping that Ambulance NB makes good on a promise to offer dispatching to other fire departments interested in taking on the responsibility. “I’d like to see it expanded,” says Partridge. “That would be a plus for everybody.”

Dorchester fire chief Greg Partridge. Image: Facebook

Memramcook Mayor Maxime Bourgeois says he was also happy to receive the news on Wednesday that Ambulance NB would make the change. “We were putting a lot of pressure, and they were saying that they were working on it,” says Bourgeois, “but obviously, we were a little bit skeptical about how fast they could resolve this issue.”

It’s been about nine months since Ambulance NB stopped medical call dispatching. In March, spokesperson Christianna Williston told CHMA via email that the organization didn’t have the mandate to dispatch to fire departments, and that they had determined doing so was no longer sustainable.

On Wednesday, Williston confirmed the return to medical first responders dispatching would take place October 5, and that it would happen “through existing resources”.… Continue

Mitton on possible early election call, climate change hearings, and $1 billion surplus

Memramcook Tantramar MLA Megan Mitton says she’s not sure if Premier Blaine Higgs will call an election this week, and says it’s a “challenging situation”, especially in the Tantramar region where there’s been six elections since 2018.

CHMA spoke with Mitton last week from her office in Sackville:

If Higgs does call an early election this week, residents of Tantramar will be voting in a new riding, after the New Brunswick electoral commission changed boundaries to split Memramcook-Tantramar, returning Memramcook to a Dieppe riding, and leaving Tantramar on its own, as the smallest riding by population in the province. Mitton says she will be running in Tantramar, a perhaps unsurprising decision considering Sackville is her hometown, and where she first took on political office as town councillor.

Last month, Mitton and her Green Party colleague Kevin Arsenault were named deputy leaders of the party. Mitton says she’s honoured to have the title, which means the potential for a “bigger leadership role within the party,” something that might come in handy in an election. “The plan is for me to be able to support other Greens to be able to head to Fredericton,” says Mitton.

Green leader David Coon also told reporters recently that in case of no clear majority after the next election, the New Brunswick Greens would not consider supporting a Higgs government, but would consider doing so with the Liberals under Susan Holt. “The key thing is that we could never support Blaine Higgs’ PCs,” says Mitton.… Continue

The Sackville BIA has money to spend, and wants business owners to get involved in how to spend it

Sahitya Pendurthi is the new president of the Sackville Business Improvement Area. Photo: Jon Wolfe

Sackville’s Business Improvement Area has been undergoing a process of rejuvenation and reorganization for a few years now. Recently, the organization elected a new board of directors and a new president, Sahitya Pendurthi, who is hoping to continue the revitalization of the BIA.

Pendurthi is relatively new to Sackville, but her name may still be familiar. She ran for a seat on Tantramar council in 2022, adding her name to the ballot just days before the election, out of concern that there would be no contest in the former town of Sackville. It turns out she needn’t have worried, with healthy slate of nine candidates putting their names forward for the fours seats in Ward 3 by the deadline. But Pendurthi ran seriously anyway, and nearly won a seat in the newly amalgamated council.

These days, she’s still putting her energy towards “helping this community become its best self,” as president of the BIA. Pendurthi is not a local business owner herself, but is sitting as a proxy representative for Vortex Games.

CHMA sat down with Pendurthi to find out about her role and what the Sackville BIA will be doing under her leadership:

Pendurthi’s enthusiasm for the town she now calls home is palpable, and hopefully contagious, as she sets out to drum up interest and energy from the other members of the downtown Sackville BIA.… Continue

Sackville Festival of Early Music concerts kick off tonight, after a week of outreach

Musicians from L’Harmonie des saisons engage with students at Salem Elementary in Sackville. Photo: Shawn Bostick, SFEM

The Sackville Festival of Early Music kicks off a series of three public concerts tonight with L’Harmonie des saisons at the Brunton Auditorium. But the musicians have already been busy this week, in locals schools and at Mount Allison, engaging young musicians and music lovers.

CHMA spoke to festival director Linda Pearse to get the lowdown on the 19th season for the Sackville Festival of Early Music:

For 19 years now, the Sackville Festival of Early Music (SFEM) has celebrated Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music, through performance, educational outreach, master class instruction, and amateur workshops.

This weekend features three public concerts: On Friday night, Ensemble L’Harmonie des saisons plays a program of Bach Concertos, and then on Saturday, Ensemble Constantinople presents a programme of early Indigenous musics entitled Breathings. On Sunday afternoon, L’Harmonie des Saisons returns for a concert featuring Mount Allison’s new Klop continuo organ, a recent grant-funded acquisition.

Mount Allison University’s new Klop continuo organ. Photo: Linda Pearse, SFEM

“With this instrument, we can access so much more repertoire and our students get to have that opportunity to learn about historical performance practice,” says Pearse. “It’s very exciting.”

The Klop organ is the second addition to Mount Allison’s music department inspired and organized by the festival. Last year, the department acquired a harpischord through a gift from a dedicated festival fan.

You can see and hear the new organ played by Mount Allison music professor Dr.… Continue

Pale, pink sun seen in New Brunswick due to wild fire smoke high in the atmosphere

Photo by Pam Novak in Cookville, NB, at 9am Wednesday morning.

If you glanced up in the sky on Wednesday you may have noticed the odd appearance of the sun. For much of the day it appeared to be a pale, pinkish colour. CHMA called up Jim Prime, an Environment Canada meteorologist based in Fredericton to find out what was going on.

“It’s actually forest fire smoke,” says Prime, “which is just elevated in the atmosphere.” The uniform haze making the sun appear so different is “just a brief period of really concentrated smoke which is passing over us as it’s moving to the south,” he says.

Prime says the smoke is coming from fires in northern and western Canada, which is going high up in the atmosphere and being concentrated by various weather patterns.

Photo by Ashley Patterson, in Middleton, NB around 1pm on Wednesday.

“It can travel really great distances,” says Prime about the high level smoke. And because it’s so high, there’s not a lot of negative impact at ground level, expect a slight drop in temperature.

“We’re very lucky because it is higher up,” says Prime. “Looking at all of our air quality sensors, we’re not picking up any readings at the surface. And with this high pressure system, things are not really turbulent, so we don’t get a lot of mixing down to the surface.”

“Really the main impacts from it are that we can see interesting colours sometimes in the morning or in the evening, somewhat similar to when you get a sunset or a sunrise,” says Prime.… Continue

World Wide Rally for Freedom comes to Sackville and finds a park filled with rainbows

This past Saturday, Sackville’s Bill Johnstone Park was a hive of activity as people responded to two very different calls for rallies at the park at roughly the same time: a group of about 80 local residents celebrating LGBTQ+ rights, and a smaller group coalescing around common conspiracy theories.

About 25 people came to the park from around the province to hold a “World Wide Rally For Freedom” in Sackville, an event called in dozens of cities and towns by a group known as Worldwide Demonstrations with a presence on Facebook and Telegram.

Organizer Melissa Kearns says many of the group came from Sussex, Hampton and Saint John and also from across the border in Amherst. “We actually wanted to do Sackville because we were hoping to pull in Nova Scotia and PEI,” said Kearns. “And just kind of make it so that we all converged in one place… This is a global thing. It’s not about Sackville. It’s not about New Brunswick. It’s not about any one group. This is everybody’s freedom.”

Hold the Line NB, Druthers, and Diagolon

Ralliers the World Wide Rally for Freedom outside the gate of Bill Johnstone Park in Sackville on Saturday, September 23, 2023. Photo: Erica Butler

Kearns said she’s affiliated with Hold the Line NB, a slogan which points to a website for the New Brunswick Anti-Smart City Alliance, featuring articles on a number of conspiracy theories popular with far right movements.… Continue

Category: Community News

Hold the Line NB, Druthers, and Diagolon