Category: Community News

The first people on the scene to Sunday night’s tragic collision were Sackville Fire Department volunteers. The SFD received the call through 911 along with Ambulance NB and the RCMP. An ambulance arrived at the scene 27 minutes after a 911 call was received, and the RCMP arrived sometime after that. According to witnesses, SFD volunteers were quick to the scene and active in helping out, however limited in what they could do. Although Sackville firefighters are trained in workplace first aid and CPR, they are not trained as medical first responders, as their counterparts at the Dorchester Fire Department.

About 80% of the firefighters in the Dorchester department are trained as medical first responders, says fire chief Greg Partridge. That means they undergo additional training and are able to do things like administer oxygen and operate defibrillators.

With Dorchester farther away from an Ambulance NB station than Sackville, the extra training for the fire department volunteers has come in handy many times, says Partridge. “On a good day, [Ambulance NB is] 15 minutes away. We’ve had response times an hour or so,” says Partridge. “And it doesn’t really seem to be getting any better.”

Partridge says he thinks about half of the calls the department receives are medical calls, and depending on the situation, the early medical intervention can make a big difference.… Continue

This is a commemorative year for Sackville’s Enterprise and Fawcett foundries, the once bustling manufacturing businesses that served as anchor employers in the town for decades.

Janet Crawford remembers the heyday of the foundries, and together with musical collaborator Ray Legere, has chanelled some of those memories into a new album. Foundry Town features ten new original songs dedicated to Sackville’s Enterprise and Fawcett foundries, which first fired up 150 and 170 years ago, respectively.

The pair are performing the album this Sunday at the Sackville Legion along with fellow musicians Frank Doody and Bruce Dixon, and writer Susan Amos who will share some stories from her book and play about the foundries, also released in this commemorative year.

CHMA dropped by Fog Forest Gallery this week to chat with the musicians and hear more about the project.

This isn’t the first collaboration for Legere and Crawford. They also worked with Live Bait Theatre in 2019 to create a musical project celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Intercolonial Railway in Sackville.

Crawford lived in town when the foundries where still major employers in Sackville, and has woven some of that experience into the songs, which she says are really an homage to all working people.

“I remember very, very clearly what it was like when the Foundry whistle blew,” says Crawford. “And when, you know, 400 people went to work every day.… Continue

New Brunswick’s Electoral Boundaries Commission is recommending that the Memramcook-Tantramar riding be split up, and revert back to boundaries resembling the situation before the 2014 election. The proposal would remove Memramcook and add it to a a riding with a small part of Dieppe. The riding of Tantramar would be made up of the new municipalities of Tantramar and Strait Shores combined, along with parts of the surrounding Rural District and a small chunk of Cap-Acadie.

Politics professor Mario Levesque says the commission “chickened out” on their task of realigning boundaries to consider varied population across the province, while also balancing factors such as community of interest. “They are kicking the real heavy lifting down the road in another 10 years time,” says Levesque.

Levesque says the commission chose to go along linguistic lines, and put predominantly English speaking areas together, and predominantly French speaking areas together. “From a democratic perspective, you can question that,” says Levesque. “People in Tantramar will have a greater say in choosing their person, because their vote is more powerful.”

The new riding of Tantramar will have 9058 electors according to the commissions calculations, based on data from Elections NB. That’s about 2600 fewer electors than the average across the province, and the lowest number of electors out of all 49 ridings in the province. Neighbouring riding of Shediac-Beaubassin-Cap-Pelé will have 13,317 electors, the highest number of electors in the province, and 4,259 more potential voters than Tantramar.… Continue

A young man was seriously injured when he was struck by a driver in a crosswalk on Sunday night in Sackville. Sergeant Eric Hanson of the Sackville RCMP says that the young man was transported to hospital in Moncton, and that his injuries are not life threatening.

Hanson says the driver of the vehicle was not hurt, and that alcohol was not a factor in the crash. “We are continuing our investigation,” said Hanson on Monday, “including doing a mechanical inspection of the vehicle that was involved in the collision.”

The young man was crossing Main Street at King, in a marked crosswalk with warning lights flashing as he crossed, said Hanson. It’s not clear how fast the car was going when the collision happened.

As of Monday afternoon, no one had been charged. “It’s too early to say as to whether any charges would be considered,” said Hanson.

The first to arrive on the scene of the collision were the Sackville Fire Department, with Ambulance New Brunswick and the RMCP arriving about 30 minutes after the collision, according to witnesses on the scene.

Sackville Fire Chief Chief Craig Bowser deferred CHMA’s request for information on the incident to the RCMP.

CHMA has reached out to Medavie for information on the response time of the ambulance, and have yet to hear back. According to police scanner monitors, there was no Rapid Response Unit available to come to the scene.

Ambulance NB paramedics took the man to hospital in Moncton for treatment, as the Sackville emergency department (ED) had already closed down for the day.… Continue

One afternoon in November, a couple dozen people gathered in the church hall at the Main Street Baptist church to sit down together for lunch. Chicken soup, egg salad sandwiches and warm apple crisp were just some of the menu items on offer, all prepared by volunteers with the Main Street Cafe, a new initiative spearheaded by Main Street Baptist member Jennifer Ward.

Ward says the idea behind the cafe is part social outlet and part meal service. “There’s a lot of new people in the area,” says Ward. “And with the rising cost of food and fuel and everything, there’s some struggling people out there.”

Ward says she’s even noticed people sleeping rough in town recently. Couple that with the shadow pandemic of loneliness, especially in already isolated groups like seniors, and Ward saw an opportunity. “I thought, well why not open our doors and invite these people in? Whether you’re hurting, whether you’re hungry, whether you’re lonely or new, come on over,” says Ward.

Researchers say that in 2021, about a fifth of New Brunswick households were food insecure, meaning they were concerned about meeting their food needs at some point in the year. We’re now at the end of 2022, and though the data is not in yet, it’s hard to imagine that number will have gone anywhere but up, considering rapid inflation in food prices and other basic needs like housing in the past year.… Continue