Heritage advocate Meredith Fisher got up to address Tantramar council shortly after 7pm Monday night with a gallery full of about 35 supporters.
Fisher told council she wanted them to make heritage a priority in their upcoming strategic plan, and emulate places like Wolfville, Nova Scotia, where she says the town has been “reaping economic and social benefits” from its heritage by-laws.
Fisher reminded councillors that built heritage is fleeting. “Once lost, heritage is never replaceable,” she said, “and the community loses its sense of place, distinctiveness and aesthetic value.”
Fisher said that residents were full of ideas on how to preserve and protect the town’s built heritage, including the creation of a heritage advisory committee to “work with council to help create a sensible, practical heritage bylaw and to help implement a strategy.”
“It is vitally and urgently important to consider our heritage as a top level strategic planning goal,” concluded Fisher, “because it is our heritage that binds us together and defines us as a community more perfectly than anything else.”
Before Fisher got up to address council, Mayor Andrew Black made a statement clarifying something that had circulated in a letter from Tantramar Heritage Trust president Logan Atkinson in advance of the meeting. Atkinson’s letter paraphrased the mayor, saying he had advised “that Council needs to see that there is significant public support to include Heritage in the new 5 year plan.”
Black took issue with that phrasing, and told council that in fact he had simply advised resident Meredith Fisher that a public presentation was the “perfect opportunity and the proper process” for bringing issues forward to council.
After the meeting, Atkinson further clarified, saying the message he sent to Trust members was “intended to attract people to this presentation tonight”, and not meant to give the impression that it was an event coordinated by the Tantramar Heritage Trust. Atkinson said that personally, he felt Fisher’s presentation hit the mark. “I think the points that she made are really central to what we’d like to see this community develop,” said Atkinson.
He said Monday’s meeting was not the right time to discuss specifics of potential heritage policies, but rather that “this is about a higher level concern. It’s about getting the idea of respect for our heritage as a top level priority.”
Councillor Michael Tower voiced the lone council reaction to Fisher’s address. After needling the heritage advocate for failing to mention the Planters (Tower’s ancestors among them) in her list of significant historical groups populating Sackville, Tower put in a good word for a new heritage bylaw.
The previous town of Sackville bylaw was repealed in 2018, with unanimous support of council at the time, including Tower. The repeal came after a period of conflict and controversy from 2012 to 2015, over the proposed and eventual demolition of the former and historic Sackville United Church on Main Street.
“We lost that heritage bylaw, and I agree it should come back,” said Tower. “Even more so now that we’ve gone from Sackville to Tantramar, because we know that just across the way, historic Dorchester is there… So I think it’s even more important that we bring a bylaw in to start protecting some places.”
Tantramar council is expected to attend a two-day workshop this month to come up with a new five year strategic plan, in part based on public and stakeholder input that’s detailed in a What We Heard report by consultants Strategic Steps Inc.
Heritage is mentioned a number of times in that document, under headings of “Sustainability”, “Community and Cultural Facilities”, “Tourism & Economic Development”, “Housing” and “One Big Thing”.
