Master of ceremonies Garth Zwicker handed out two delectable prizes at this year’s veterans banner unveiling
“I thought I’d start off with a couple of door prizes,” Garth Zwicker said as he kicked off this year’s ceremony for the unveiling of 10 more military veterans’ street banners.
“You’ve got to be quick and you’ve got to know your stuff,” he warned the 65 people in attendance, adding that hundreds of pounds of a certain product were supplied to troops during World War II.
“Lobster?” someone called out. “Sugar?” “Rum?”
“OK, I’ll give you a hint. It’s not an unwanted message on your computer,” Zwicker said.
“Spam,” called out Logan Atkinson, past president of Tantramar Heritage Trust who won himself a shiny can of the luncheon meat and then a couple of minutes later, a box of Kraft Dinner, apparently another staple of military rations “but not necessarily in the same format,” Zwicker explained.
“So, we all know what Logan Atkinson is having for supper,” he said before thanking Graham Mesheau for designing the banners and the town for putting them up on street poles in Sackville and Dorchester every year.
Book of banners
Zwicker announced that, aside from unveiling the street banners this year, he was inviting people to pre-order a book he had compiled containing about 250 banners along with the family stories that go with them.
The book will be available later this fall. To pre-order it, click here.
The $35 book, published by Tantramar Heritage Trust, is expected to be launched in November.
One of the stories in the book is about the late Harold Johnson who served in the Royal Canadian Navy for 11 years and for three in the Royal Canadian Engineers.
“He joined in 1957,” said his wife Eleanor who attended this year’s banner ceremony with her nephew Lee from Alberta.
“Harold served on both coasts, BC and Halifax,” she said, adding that serving in the navy gave him the chance to see the world.
“He was to Australia and Fiji and New Zealand, Hawaii, Great Britain, all over the world,” she said.
“Then he became a truck driver after that.”
“I joined him in 1995 when I got my trucker’s license. We drove in all 10 Canadian provinces and in 46 of the 48 continental United States,” she added.
They were living in Sackville where she grew up when Harold Johnson died of cancer on June 3rd, 2025.
“It was just five days shy of our 41st wedding anniversary,” Eleanor said sadly.
Eleanor Johnson attended the unveiling of her husband’s veterans memorial banner with her nephew Lee Johnson
Trained boxer
The Belliveau brothers, Rod and twins Mark and Marcel attended the ceremony to witness the unveiling of their uncle Raymond Martin’s banner.
“He served in the 3rd Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment,” Rod said.
“He was the son of my grandmother and grandfather, Henry and Lil Martin of Mount Whatley and Aulac,” he added.
“He served mainly throughout the Cold War and did tours in Cyprus and Germany.”
Belliveau said his uncle was underage, actually only about 16 when he enlisted and that the military stretched things to let him in because they needed a trained boxer for regiment competitions.
“In fact, Bob Edgett trained him,” he said, adding his uncle won championships competing against the British army.
“He’s named after our great uncle, Raymond Ashe, who is from Springhill,” said Mark Belliveau.
“Raymond Ashe died in the Allied invasion of Sicily in the Second World War and there’s a plaque honouring him at Monte Cassino Cemetery in Italy.”
He added that his uncle Raymond Martin was working for a manufacturing company in London, Ontario when he died in an industrial accident in 1992.
“I was actually serving overseas, in Africa in the Congo at the time, or Zaire when I got the notice that he was killed,” Mark said.
Rod said he and his brothers served in C Squadron of the 8th Canadian Hussars (Princess Louise’s) based for many years in Sackville.
“Our cousin Greg Martin, was a sergeant major who was part of town council some years ago, and was one of the people that swore my twin brothers into the squadron, into the regiment,” he said.
The Belliveau brothers witnessed the unveiling of their uncle Raymond’s banner. L-R: Mark, Rod and Marcel Belliveau
Banner history
Garth Zwicker says he began thinking about installing street banners back in 2015 and the first ones went up the next year.
“The project has gone from 16 banners in the first year and then we went to 38 and we thought we were done,” he says.
“Then we went to 75 and 100 and 125 and 150,” he adds.
“Nobody ever expected it to hit that number.”
“There are almost 250 banners now,” Zwicker says.
“Each banner tells a story and represents sacrifice, courage and dedication,” Tantramar Mayor Debbie Wiggins-Colwell told the families attending the unveiling ceremony.
“It’s more than a display of banners. It’s a lasting commitment to remembering the men and women who served our country.”
Delicious door prize dinner
Tantramar Heritage Trust Past President Logan Atkinson displays the delicious ingredients he won for Saturday night’s supper. Sadly, Warktimes was not invited to partake in that feast
Commentary: The tricky world of misrepresentation — gas plant edition
By Logan Atkinson, Seniors for Climate — Tantramar
Pixabay Pinocchio image created by iffany
Children have a wonderfully efficient way of getting to the heart of the matter. “Liar! Liar! Pants on fire!” If a peer steps outside the recognized moral order, then there’s no need for debate, reflection, appeals and counter-appeals. Instead, the kids go directly to their own system of justice – chants, ridicule, humiliation and, ultimately, banishment to the far reaches of the playground.
Rough justice? Perhaps. But effective? Almost certainly.
In the world of adult discourse, however, to accuse someone of lying is a business fraught with risk. Instead, we tend towards “misrepresentation” as the safer accusation. After all, a statement might be made innocently, without knowledge that it’s untrue. Perhaps it’s made negligently, made without checking the facts carefully enough. Or, in some cases, a misrepresentation might be fraudulent, made with the intent to deceive and to exact some advantage.
This last is the lie.
For over a year now, the proponents (NB Power and PROENERGY) of the Centre Village fossil-fuel plant in Tantramar have been accused of misrepresentation by members of the public fighting against the project. The subjects of concern have been many: water usage, operating times, the need for more power, emissions levels, the economic implications. And on and on.
Are the alleged misrepresentations innocent? Are they negligent? Or are they lies, made with the intent to deceive the public and to exact some advantage, perhaps support for the project among citizens-at-large?
Indigenous investment claim
At the beginning, the Centre Village project proponents claimed that they had secured an equity investment from Indigenous investors. This is important and merits greater scrutiny. We can start with the proponents’ filing with the New Brunswick environmental impact assessment agency, dated July 4, 2025.
In section 2 on page 4, you will see the following representation:
There it is, in black and white. The proponent is holding out to the provincial regulator, and to the public, that the NSMTC has invested in the project.
The proponents were required to file something similar with the federal Impact Assessment Agency of Canada. This document is also dated July 4, 2025, and in section 2, page 1, it says:
It’s less clear here that NSMTC is represented as an equity investor in the Project, although that’s safe to assume given that NSMTC is being held out as a signatory to the tolling agreement.
But any ambiguity is removed further along, in section 4 on page 4, where we find this:
Public info sessions
To this point at least, there’s nothing to suggest that the representation of Indigenous investment in the Centre Village project is a misrepresentation. But then proponents held two public information sessions in Tantramar, the first at the Music Barn in Upper Sackville on August 12, 2025, and the second at the Civic Centre in Sackville on August 13th.
One of the display panels at the first public meeting clearly indicated that the North Shore Mi’kmaq Tribal Council was an equity participant, an investor, in the project.
Innocent? Negligent? Fraudulent? Are we yet to the point of “pants on fire?”
At the second public information session, the same display panel appeared, with the same misrepresentation of Indigenous investment. I pointed this out to Mr. Jackson, and asked why the panel hadn’t been corrected to reflect the true state of affairs. He merely smiled in response.
A question and answer session followed. When pressed about the misrepresentation, John MacIsaac (speaking for PROENERGY) said something to the effect that we can’t control what the media say about ownership of the project. But it was pointed out to Mr. MacIsaac that the media are simply repeating what appears in the proponents’ own proposal to the environmental regulators.
After that, Mr. Jackson claimed that the proposal was written as it was (claiming a First Nations’ equity interest instead of the actual option) to make it easier to understand!
At this point, things are getting serious. Was this an admission that the misrepresentation was made with the knowledge that it was false? Are we slipping away from mere innocence or negligence? Is the possibility of fiery pants now too obvious to ignore?
A-G blows the whistle
In case additional evidence were needed about this misrepresentation, the New Brunswick’s Auditor General released his 2026 Annual Report in installments at the end of May and early in June. Volume 2 addressed the Centre Village project, and the misrepresentation about Indigenous investment was succinctly pointed out on page 15:
Then, a bit later in June, Lori Clark, President and CEO of NB Power, testified before the Public Accounts Committee at the New Brunswick legislature, and appeared to deflect responsibility for the misrepresentation back to PROENERGY.
All doubt was removed when Brad Coady, a Vice-President of NB Power, was interviewed following his appearance at Tantramar Municipal Council on July 14th. Mr. Coady confirmed that no Indigenous investment had been made, and went even further, suggesting that such an investment is a nice-to-have, rather than a must-have. Indigenous communities have the opportunity to invest, he said, and that’s good enough. There is no formal regulatory requirement that Indigenous investment be secured.
Maybe Mr. Coady is right. Maybe there’s nothing in the formal law to compel Indigenous partnership in a project like the proposed Centre Village fossil-fuel plant. But is formal law the only mechanism at work here? Is formal law the only basis on which the project proponents might be judged? The evidence is very clear that the question of Indigenous investment in the project has been misrepresented from the very beginning.
Do we really want to play with the American firm PROENERGY, a firm that misrepresents a vital feature of its project, and then over months and months of scrutiny fails to own up to that misrepresentation? Do you think that this misrepresentation is innocent? Negligent? Something worse?
What would the children on the playground say?
How loud might the chants become?
How might they judge the behaviour of PROENERGY?
Do you think PROENERGY would be banished to the farthest reaches of the playground?
Logan Atkinson is a member of Seniors for Climate — Tantramar, scantantramar@gmail.com