On today’s CHMA local news:
- Port Elgin school garden keeps on growing;
- Sackville goes local;
- New Brunswick considers a slightly bigger bubble;
- Assault and weapons charges in Moncton;
- and the Maritimes COVID numbers update.
One new case in the Maritimes
New Brunswick reported one new case of COVID-19 on Sunday.
Someone in their fifties in the central health zone tested positive.
The person is a close contact of a previously confirmed case related to travel.
There are now four active cases in New Brunswick, two in the South East region, which includes Moncton and Sackville, and two in the central zone, which includes Fredericton.
Nova Scotia and PEI both reported no new cases of COVID-19 over the weekend.
There are two active cases of COVID-19 in Nova Scotia, and seven in PEI.
Port Elgin school garden still growing, amidst COVID shutdown
Port Elgin Regional School is empty of students for the summer, but staff and administration are busy preparing for their potential return this fall.
Some staff and community members are getting their hands dirty maintaining Port Elgin Regional’s own vegetable garden.
The garden began as a small plot six years ago, and has since grown to be over twenty by thirty-five feet.
Teacher and head of the project Catherine Glencross says the garden has erupted into a school-wide food security education project.
Click to listen:
“A big part of why the garden is so important to us, you know, it’s not just to teach children where the food comes from and to encourage them to try things. But it’s also for this huge food insecurity that is within all of our communities.“
Port Elgin Regional principal Christoph Becker says that the next goal is to build a four season greenhouse on school grounds.
Becker originally planned for the greenhouse to have much more student involvement at this stage.
Click to listen:
“Just before COVID-19, the plan was that we had all the kids designing different greenhouses from aquaponics, hydroponics, aeroponics, and they were going to design and present to us a form of greenhouse. And then we were going to do a Dragon’s Den or Shark Tank kind of way of assessing them. So they would have to come in front of a board and present. However, COVID-19 put this all into play. And we’re kind of in a rush to get this greenhouse going, though, because our sponsor, the brewer Foundation has been waiting almost a year and a half for this to happen. And with COVID-19 being here, we’re kind of sad that it hadn’t been built yet. But my reasoning was that this had to be a project that the kids were totally invested in that they were part of.“
Despite the COVID-19 interruption, Becker is still focused on student engagement with the project.
Click to listen:
“Instead of us being the experts. I want them to become the experts. I mean, when I look at soil chemistry, irrigation systems, there’s all kinds of things that kids can really delve into. And I want them to do it, Hey, is this soil good enough? What’s the best way to grow a tomato, you know, what it is this optimal conditions, I want them to discover that and learn and do experiments and say, Hey, if I use manure, different types, someone or different, you know, lime or calcium carbonate or whatever it is that you would put into a garden and let them experiment. And that’s where the beauty of this all then becomes a reality to them, so that they’ll be even better gardeners than we are.“
The school is working on a bigger plan to improve food security for Port Elgin students.
Becker says that there are two additional grants in progress to add a kitchen and purchase a bus for the school.
Click to listen:
“I’ve already written another grant with horizon Health Foundation to put a kitchen into our school, where we’d have a teaching kitchen where we could have our My goal is to have seniors come in to work with our youth, to teach them how to preserve how to, you know, best packaged food, freezers and that kind of stuff. And then it would be a really nice joint effort where, you know, some of our isolated seniors are, you know, so far away and It’d be nice for them to have some kind of social interaction with our students and teach them at the same time.“
For now, Port Elgin Regional is planting and harvesting vegetables from their garden.
Catherine Glencross says community members are welcome to visit the garden provided they respect social distancing measures.
Click to listen:
“I would love people to come and sit and enjoy the garden. We put one of our buddy benches under the trees. So bring a picnic come and just sit down and enjoy and if there’s some weeds, pick them.”
Anyone with extra vegetable plants are encouraged to donate them to the plot.
New Local Week promotion coming to Sackville
The Town of Sackville’s new Climate Change Awareness Coordinator wants you to eat local.
Breanna MacLeod is coordinating Sackville’s first Local Week promotion, where participating restaurants will feature locally-produced food on their menus.
Aura-Lynn Groomes has more details:
Click to listen:
That was Aura-Lynn Groomes reporting for CHMA.
Extending the bubble to include some Quebec communities
The New Brunswick government says it is strongly considering lifting isolation requirements for residents of two Quebec counties in order to reunite them with their New Brunswick neighbours.
Premier Blaine Higgs said in a statement Friday the province is exploring whether it is feasible to ease border restrictions at crossings in Campbellton and outside Edmundston.
The government says it is assembling data to help with a decision and will present recommendations to the all party-cabinet COVID-19 committee next week.
Restrictions between Amherst and Sackville were eased two weeks ago as part of the Atlantic bubble, but Amherst Mayor David Kogon says the current system of checkpoints is, “essentially creating a closed border.”
The increased traffic at the crossing, combined with paperwork requirements for those crossing into New Brunswick, has created delays for essential workers and others travelling across the Aulac border.
The mayors of Sackville and Amherst are calling for changes to improve the flow of traffic across the border.
The lion’s share of New Brunswick border crossings take place at the Aulac border.
On Sunday, about 4000 personal and commercial vehicles crossed at Aulac, roughly half of the border crossings into the province.
The province says it turned away 220 vehicles at provincial borders on Sunday.
Assault and weapons charges against Moncton man
Codiac RCMP say they have arrested a Moncton man after an assault complaint and search warrant last week.
Police laid 18 charges against the 38-year-old man, including sexual assault and possession of unlicensed firearms.
The man remains in custody pending a bail hearing this week.
Police say the investigation is continuing.
CHMA Daily News is hosted Mahalia Thompson-Onichino, and produced by Erica Butler, with contributions from Bruce Wark, Meg Cunningham, Aura-Lynn Groomes, Geoff de Gannes, and James Anderson.
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