Sandpiper Shep will get plaque & maybe a new coat of paint

Posted on July 17, 2025 by brucewark

Councillor Debbie Wiggins-Colwell with Shep

Tantramar Councillor Debbie Wiggins-Colwell says she’s pleased to hear that a non-profit group will be working with the town and its citizens to design a plaque for Shep, the giant shorebird sculpture in Dorchester’s Village Square.

“I’m so excited about that happening,” Wiggins-Colwell said in an interview today with Warktimes.

“It’s very important for our community and for the awareness of the semi-palmated sandpiper.”

She was referring to news that the Fundy Biosphere Region, a non-profit group that promotes conservation and tourism, is working with town staff to design the plaque.

In an e-mail to Warktimes, Naomi Meed, Fundy Biosphere’s strategic engagement manager added that her group will also solicit feedback from the community about the plaque’s design and content on Saturday, August 9th during this year’s Sandpiper Festival in Dorchester.

Among other things, the plaque is likely to say that the Fundy Biosphere Region paid for the $9,300 statue and that it was created by Robin Hanson, the artist who operates a workshop, art gallery and historical theme park in French Lake, near Oromocto.

Hanson had been approached by then Dorchester Mayor Debbie Wiggins-Colwell to create a fibreglass replacement for the original wooden Shep in time for the 2023 Sandpiper Festival celebrating the return of the shorebirds to the Bay of Fundy in August.

But when the newly amalgamated municipal council and staff seemed uninterested in restoring the Shep statue, Wiggins-Colwell had it installed herself leading to code of conduct complaints against her and a $19,000 investigation that concluded, among other things, that she did not follow proper municipal procurement policies.

(During her successful campaign for a Tantramar Council seat, Wiggins-Colwell had promised to have Shep returned to the $15,000 concrete platform, stairs and railings that the Village of Dorchester had already built for it.)

Shep ‘touch-up’ needed

Meantime, artist Robin Hanson says he’d be happy to come to Dorchester to touch Shep up free of charge.

He explained that ultra-violet sunlight can damage outdoor sculptures like Shep.

After viewing some photos that Warktimes sent to him, Hanson e-mailed to say he noticed some yellowing and a brownish tinge.

“Some sandpipers are very white on the underside,” he writes. “If we lightly sanded the smooth surfaces and sprayed with white paint, it will look much brighter.”

Hanson added that a “little face-lift” for statues like Shep is needed every couple of years.

He said he can’t tell from the photos if  the fibreglass Shep needs another coat of clear epoxy.

“Just say the word and I will come and assess,” he writes.

Tourism & science

Councillor Wiggins-Colwell says the Shep statue draws tourists from all over the world who come to the Dorchester area every August  to observe the return of the migrating shorebirds to the Bay of Fundy.

“Last year, we had over 200 scientists and shorebird watchers from about 20 countries who had their photo taken with Shep,” Wiggins-Colwell said. “So it just lets you know how important this is to have Shep here.”

Meantime, she and her husband have created four smaller Shep statues that welcome people to Dorchester.

“We have something very unique in our little community, so we do have to celebrate it,” she says.

Posted in Dorchester, Environment, Town of Tantramar | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Tantramar Council hears QAnon, anti-COVID message during 2-minute presentation

Posted on July 14, 2025 by brucewark

Sackville resident Sara Rideout reads her statement expressing QAnon claims

Sackville resident Sara Rideout followed procedural rules when she registered in advance for a two-minute presentation to Tantramar Town Council last week.

After Mayor Black called her name, Rideout began by quoting the Bible, Luke chapter 8, verse 17:

“For nothing is secret that will not be revealed, nor anything hidden that will not be known and come to light.”

She then referred to what she sees as hidden truths that the outbreak of  COVID-19 brought to light over the last five years.

“What we called a pandemic was not truly about a virus,” she said. “Instead it revealed the deep control woven through every system: education, healthcare, politics, business and finance at every level from local to global.”

In a reference to theories advanced by adherents of the group QAnon, Rideout mentioned an ongoing secret military campaign against the “deep state” that some believe U.S. President Donald Trump is now leading.

“Behind the scenes, there has been a covert military operation working for decades to cleanse the earth of darkness and deception that has held humanity captive and in slavery through the systems of control,” she said, adding that central to what she called “the Q-Plan” is the protection of children who are abused and tortured by liberal elites.

“This truth is about protecting God’s beautiful children from horrific evils, human trafficking, adrenochrome, organ harvesting, money laundering, and all forms of darkness.”

Vaccine safety

In an interview outside the council chamber, Rideout rejected the argument that COVID-19 was a worldwide public health emergency.

“When in your lifetime were people forced to wear masks and to take injections?” she asked.

“The time that I was in the military, not once did we ever close borders for a worldwide flu,” she added, referring to her 12 years as a supply technician in the Canadian armed forces.

When reminded of quarantines in the 1940s and 50s for infectious diseases such as polio, scarlet fever and whooping cough before the development of vaccines to protect against them, Rideout asked:

“Have you done any research on what’s in any of the vaccines?”

She then referred to heavy metals, chemical substances and fetal cells:

“Aluminum, barium, also formaldehyde, polysorbate 80, which allows heavy metals to cross the blood-brain barrier,” she said.

“There’s lots of ways to find information about what I’m saying,” she added. “People worldwide know exactly what I’m telling you right now.”

From McGill University:  Should We worry about metals in vaccines?

From Government of Canada: COVID-19: Vaccine safety and side effects.

From the American Academy of Pediatrics: Fact Checked: Vaccines Do Not Contain Fetal Cells.

From the Canadian Paediatric Society: Vaccine Myths and Facts.

To read a transcript of Sara Rideout’s presentation to council, click here.

Posted in COVID-19, Health care, Town of Tantramar | Tagged , | 13 Comments

‘Warts and all,’ the need for community-based journalism

Posted on July 11, 2025 by brucewark

L-R: Paul MacNeill, Jo-Ann Roberts, Marcel Parker-Gallant, Darrell Cole

Paul MacNeill, publisher of PEI’s Eastern Graphic, says he’s optimistic about the future of local print journalism in spite of newspaper closures everywhere including in Sackville where the Tribune-Post ceased publication after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.

“Our print is still very strong, our advertising is still very strong, and that’s because we’re relevant and have boots on the ground,” MacNeill  told a journalism symposium at Mount Allison University last month.

He mentioned his father Jim, who started the weekly paper in 1963 after emigrating to Canada from Scotland.

“He used to say a good community paper covers its community warts and all,” MacNeill said. “You’re tough when you need to be tough, but you support when you need to support and you’re always there.”

In 1998, Jim MacNeill died of a heart attack on the ferry ride back to PEI after delivering the convocation address to the graduating students at the University of King’s College in Halifax.

“Don’t let the bastards grind you down,” he told them explaining that the bastards he was referring to are people who hold power. (After Jim MacNeill had been convicted of impaired driving in 1990, he ran the story on the Eastern Graphic’s front page in keeping with his “warts and all” philosophy of holding power to account.)

“Autonomy, accountability, trust, personality,” Paul MacNeill told the symposium. “Those are the keys to local decision-making,” he said referring to his standards for local journalism at the Eastern Graphic and several other papers he publishes on PEI.

He cited research findings that show while local journalism remains the most trusted news source in Canada, 30% of Canadians pay no attention to mainstream news, instead relying on social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube.

Local journalism & social media

Jo-Ann Roberts, who spent decades as a CBC journalist before moving into advocacy and Green Party politics, said people’s reliance on social media makes media literacy education more important than ever.

“I love the idea of citizen journalism, but they should not replace trained journalists. Journalists who make curated decisions, who look for sources, who check whether they got it right,” she said.

“We need to start educating people about what media literacy is. And it’s going to become more important.”

Shrinking newsrooms, vanishing papers

Darrell Cole, who spent 30 years covering local news in Amherst and vicinity, said that journalists who work for small-town papers get to do everything.

“Besides general reporting, we covered politics, courts, sports, even IODE and Rotary meetings. I even wrote obituaries,” he said. “When I joined the industry, the paper was the heartbeat of the community.”

But when the Transcontinental Media chain bought the Amherst Daily News, the weekly Citizen-Record and the weekly Sackville Tribune-Post in 2002, Cole said things started falling apart.

“From 50 to 60 people working in Amherst and Sackville, the papers quickly went down to 20 to 25,” he said.

Eventually a staff of only four was producing the daily and weekly papers in Amherst until, in 2013, Transcontinental turned the 120-year-old Amherst Daily News into a weekly that published only on Fridays.

In 2017, after the Halifax-based Saltwire chain bought the papers, the Amherst staff went down to two and the weekly Citizen-Record was closed. About a year later, the Amherst paper became what’s known in the industry as a “shopper” full of fluffy features and distributed free with advertising flyers.

“The bread and butter of the small papers years ago was the small mom and pop businesses that advertised,” Cole said.  “Those businesses disappeared when the Walmarts and the Superstores came in and the Walmarts and Superstores don’t advertise in local papers.”

Cole joined the Municipality of Cumberland in 2022 to work as a communications officer, but said he misses the news business every day.

Listening to the community

Marcel Parker-Gallant brought a broadcaster’s perspective to the discussion. As assistant general manager of the French-language community station Radio Beauséjour, he said it’s vital to cover local issues that engage listeners who call the phone-in shows.

“Every time a host would go on air and sometimes picked subjects that weren’t related to local, no one was calling in,” he said.

“Why isn’t anybody calling in? It’s because you’re not talking about how certain things are touching their lives.”

Parker-Gallant said people go on Facebook and expose their lives because they want recognition, so it’s important for local media to cover their communities and give recognition to the people they include in their stories.

‘Print’s not dying’

Throughout the panel discussion, Paul MacNeill insisted  that printed newspapers are here to stay.

“Print’s not dying,” he said. “But the print product has to be relevant and it can’t simply be a copy of what’s been on the CBC news the night before or they’ve seen it somewhere else,” he said.

” So we’re going through a transition. I think what may be dying is corporate media, not the independent media who print.”

This is the second in a series on the Local News Matters journalism symposium held on June 14th in the Mt. A. library. For earlier coverage, click here.

Posted in Mount Allison University, Sackville Tribune-Post, Town of Sackville, University of King's College | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Town engineer says ‘no swimming,’ ‘no dogs’ signs to be posted at Sackville’s water reservoirs

Posted on July 9, 2025 by brucewark

One of two large reservoirs that serves as an emergency back-up for Sackville’s water supply. A hiking trail runs beside the reservoir on the left

Tantramar Town Engineer Jon Eppell says the town is planning to post signs within the next year to keep dogs and people out of the big, open-air reservoirs that serve as an emergency back-up for Sackville’s water supply.

The reservoirs are accessible to hikers, dog-walkers, snowshoers and cross-country skiers who use the network of Ogden Loop trails off Walker Road.

“It’s unusual to have trails so close to a water supply,” Eppell told Warktimes Tuesday night.

He acknowledged that Sackville gets its water from three deep wells, but says the reservoirs should be protected in case they’re needed as back-up.

His comments came after town council approved spending more than $100,000 to replace and refurbish three low-lift pumps inside Sackville’s water treatment plant.

“These are pumps that pump from the raw water tank that’s underneath the building, through the filters and into the clear well where it’s chlorinated and then goes into Sackville,” Eppell told council.

Sackville’s water treatment plant

Last September, council approved spending just over $55,000 to buy one new pump for the treatment plant after Eppell said the pumps, which date from 1997, have never been refurbished even though it’s standard practice to rebuild them every 7 to 12 years.

“We believe that they are operating at about 40% of their rated capacity and that has been affecting our ability to produce water,” he said at Tuesday night’s council meeting.

He added that the new pump should arrive soon and will be hoisted by crane through an existing roof hatch.

The pump that it replaces will be rebuilt and will in turn replace a second pump that will also be rebuilt to replace the third while it is refurbished.

The total bill will come to $100,705 plus HST.

To read Eppell’s two-page background report to council, click here.

For previous coverage, click here.

Sackville pump house over well  #1 is located near the treatment plant which can be seen in the distance on the right. It is one of three deep wells that pump water into the raw water reservoir underneath the plant

Last summer, Tantramar council approved spending about $113,000 to replace two wooden pump houses that dated from the early 1980s.

That  included $55,000 for a new pump for well #1 as well as additional well-drilling; $35,000 for electrical work and $22,000 for additional technical work on both wells #1 and #2.

Eppell said at the time that the pump house over well #3, which opened in 2015, is made of fibreglass and is in good shape.

Sackville’s water system includes the highly-visible tower located just off Hesler Drive that cost $4 million and was officially opened in November 2010. It has a 550,000 gallon capacity.

To read previous coverage about work on the wells, click here.

Posted in Town of Sackville, Town of Tantramar | Tagged | Leave a comment

Streetlights likely coming to former LSDs, but it’s not clear who will pay for them

Posted on July 2, 2025 by brucewark

Deputy Mayor Matt Estabrooks

At its meeting next Tuesday, Tantramar Town Council is expected to approve spending about $11,225 this year and $10,850 every year after for streetlights at 27 intersections in the former local service districts (LSDs) that were amalgamated with Sackville and Dorchester in 2023.

The mayor and several councillors spoke in favour of having the streetlights installed during their Committee of the Whole meeting last week even though no money has been set aside in this year’s budget.

“I do realize it’s unbudgeted,” said Deputy Mayor Matt Estabrooks who represents Ward 4 encompassing rural areas north of Sackville.

“But you know, representing the people from the former LSDs, this is an important one, so my hat and my interest is in having it happen as quickly as possible.”

Streetlights would be installed at several intersections in Estabrooks’s ward including at Pond Shore and Upper Aboujagane Roads as well as several on Rte. 940 at White Birch, Cookville, Midgic Station and Goose Lake Roads.

Estabrooks suggested the money could come from this year’s $50,000 council initiatives budget.

‘No reason to hold back’

Councillor Michael Tower, who represents Ward 3 that includes most of the former town of Sackville, agreed the streetlights should be installed this year.

“There’s no reason to hold back,” he said. “The LSDs do deserve something and for us to step forward now to give some improvements is what we should do.”

Treasurer Michael Beal agreed the money could come from the council initiatives budget, but warned installing streetlights could mean higher taxes in the former LSDs.

Beal estimated taxes would rise by about one cent for each $100 of assessment.

Ward 2 Councillor Barry Hicks

Councillor Barry Hicks, who represents Ward 2 that includes Westcock, British Settlement, Wood Point and Rockport, said the streetlights should be installed this year.

But he strongly disagreed with raising local taxes to pay for them since former LSD residents have already had their tax rates raised by 10 cents with further five cent increases scheduled in each of the next few years.

“We’ve already risen 10 cents and spent nothing in the LSDs yet,” Hicks complained.

Deputy Mayor Estabrooks agreed saying installing streetlights now is important.

“I also think we need another way to fund this,” he added.

Council voted unanimously to send the streetlights issue to its next regular meeting where installing them this fall is likely to be approved.

Treasurer Michael Beal said if council does goes ahead, the initial money would come from the total Tantramar budget, but decisions would have to be made about who will pay for them during the 2026 budget deliberations.

List of proposed streetlight locations

For previous coverage of LSD tax rates, click here.

Posted in NB Municipal Reform, Town of Tantramar | 9 Comments

Mounties tout body cams, but expert warns of high costs & uncertain benefits

Posted on June 26, 2025 by brucewark

Acting Sgt. Andy Paynter shows town council his new body-worn camera

RCMP Acting Sergeant Andy Paynter told Tantramar councillors on Monday that for the past two weeks, they may have noticed that most members of the Sackville detachment now have a small plastic case attached to the front of their vests.

“We’re being issued our body-worn cameras,” he said indicating that officers are being trained on how to use them.

The Sackville detachment is among the latest in New Brunswick and across Canada to receive the body-worn cameras that can record both audio and video when officers are responding to calls for service.

The camera rollout began last fall when the RCMP’s New Brunswick division issued a news release calling body-worn cameras “an independent, unbiased, and objective way to capture interactions between the community and police officers, with the goal of increasing trust between police and the communities we serve.”

The news release quoted communications officer Hans Ouellette as saying that the RCMP welcomes body-worn cameras:

“We live and work in a fast-paced, modernized environment, and the addition of this investigative tool is another positive step forward in showing our commitment to accountability and transparency.”

Front-line RCMP officers are supposed to turn on their cameras before they arrive at a service call or when they engage with members of the public.

Flashing red lights on the camera signal that it is recording.

RCMP background info

Material from RCMP background document: https://rcmp.ca/en/body-worn-cameras

Expert questions claims

Brandon University Sociology Professor Christopher Schneider. Photo submitted

Brandon University Sociology Professor Christopher Schneider, who is co-author of a forthcoming book on the police use of body-worn cameras (BWCs),  says scientific studies have produced mixed results on whether the devices reduce police use of force or the number of civilian complaints against police.

“In some circumstances, with the presence of body-worn cameras, police force goes down, as do civilian complaints, which of course is what we all like to see,” Schneider told Warktimes during a telephone interview on Wednesday.

“In other circumstances, however, there’s been evidence that has shown police use of force has increased and in many circumstances, there is no statistical or discernible difference between officers with body-worn cameras and those without,” he said.

“All of this suggests that the scientific research literature on the efficacy of body-worn cameras is mixed and inconclusive.”

As a result, Schneider says, police administrators, politicians and advocacy groups who favour BWCs, use the terms “transparency” and “accountability” to suggest that police misconduct or brutality will be exposed by the cameras and offending officers held to account for their bad behaviour.

“When we talk about accountability and transparency, it is the police that control the footage. They determine when the cameras are turned on and turned off,” he notes.

“All of which raises some serious questions about accountability and transparency when the very organization that the public is supposed to be holding to account controls the very thing that is supposed to be holding it to account.”

Schneider adds that under federal privacy legislation, BWC footage is rarely made public in Canada.

“Therefore, there is essentially no transparency in Canada around body-worn camera footage, which is really interesting I think because police know this.”

Schneider referred to an internal audit of BWCs by the Toronto Police Service in 2023.

“The Toronto police found that their own officers in use-of-force incidents did not turn on the cameras intentionally, intentionally obscured the lens of the camera and intentionally blocked the audio.”

He said officers who are found to have done these things should be fired immediately, but rarely are.

“Instead, it’s a disciplinary issue. Maybe they get docked a day’s pay, maybe a reprimand, but there’s no real disciplinary mechanisms around such behaviour and there should be.”

Concerns about costs

An example of a modern body camera designed for police use. Source Wikipedia

Schneider says the cameras, priced from about $800 to $1,500, are relatively expensive, but the main costs are the data storage and management provided by Axon, the U.S. company that is gaining a near monopoly on the use of BWCs by police forces around the world.

“In large jurisdictions, large municipalities, this can cost upwards of millions of dollars a year just to house the data on secure, cloud storage,” he says, adding that Axon is building a digital media eco-system that bundles its cameras with data storage on its proprietary evidence.com service.

“The RCMP, the Vancouver Police Department, Edmonton Police, Toronto Police, and so on, they’ve all bought in to this media ecosystem that Axon has provided,” he says.

But he wonders what would happen if Axon raises its prices and the RCMP, for example, decides it’s too expensive and wants to pull out.

“Now they have all these Axon cameras and the proprietary evidence.com cloud storage service that has all their data and all their evidence, but it’s proprietary, right?

“Axon has it and it does not transfer to a new service, like Motorola, because Motorola body-worn cameras are not going to speak to the Axon media ecosystem.”

Schneider predicts police forces will get trapped into staying with an expensive, monopolistic system.

“When police are using taxpayer money to pay for their body-worn camera provider, I think the public should be consulted. The police should go back to the public, have a public forum and say, these are all the rates we’ve been provided with. What do you guys think?

“We should be consulted because we’re paying for it.”

For earlier CBC coverage, click here.

For additional information from and about Professor Schneider, click here and here.

Posted in RCMP | Tagged | 2 Comments

Local news matters, but ‘these are desperate times’ says journalism researcher

Posted on June 16, 2025 by brucewark

Professor April Lindgren has conducted extensive research on local newsmedia

A retired Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) professor says local journalism matters because it builds a shared sense of community and provides citizens with the information they need to participate in local decision-making.

“Covering municipal council, for instance, means that people will find out what’s going on, that there’s a discussion about building a four-lane highway at the end of your street before the decision gets made at local council and it creates an opportunity for you to have a say in that,” April Lindgren told an audience of about 75 journalists, politicians, academics and members of the public Saturday during a local news symposium at Mount Allison University.

Lindgren is the principal investigator for the Local News Research Project at TMU’s school of journalism.

“Since 2008, we’ve tracked 566 local news outlets that have closed in 372 locations,” she said.

“Sadly, over the same period, while there have been new local news outlets launched, only about half as many have launched in half as many places. So the net result, when we look more closely at the data, is that at least 239 communities have experienced net losses,” she added.

“Community newspapers have accounted for three-quarters of the closings to date.”

[Locally, the Sackville Tribune-Post stopped publishing in 2020 and was officially closed in 2021.]

Effects on smaller, poorer places

Lindgren said that communities with fewer than 10,000 people have been affected most, especially in poorer places where average incomes are lower than the average for Canada as a whole.

“You know, these are desperate times,” she said as fewer community papers, broadcast stations and online outfits scramble to cover local news, including municipal councils, and in many places there’s no coverage at all.

“I think there have been certain local politicians who thought, ‘Oh great, no more pesky reporters to bug us’ as local news organizations cut back on coverage or just plain closed,” Lindgren said.

“But I spoke to a bunch of Ontario municipal politicians a year or so ago, and what I’m hearing now is, ‘Oh my God, there’s no more pesky reporters bugging us, and we don’t know how to get our message out, because everybody’s mad at us now, because everything comes as a surprise to [our residents], because they didn’t know we were talking about this, and now we made the decision, and now they’re showing up at council and yelling at us.'”

Municipal support for local media

Lindgren pointed to the town of High Level in northern Alberta where the local council bought subscriptions to the Echo-Pioneer for every house in the community in return for a page in the paper for municipal announcements.

“Now, of course, there are problems with that because if you write a story that that council doesn’t like, they can in one-fell-swoop eradicate your subscription base,” she said.

“But that’s another example, I think of the desperation that’s filtering into municipal politics.”

Theresa Blackburn, publisher and editor of the River Valley Sun in northwestern New Brunswick said the six municipalities her newspaper covers each contribute $450 a year, money that covers a full month of the paper’s printing costs.

[Tantramar council contributes $2,500 a year to help support Erica Butler’s community news on CHMA and in return, the campus/community station broadcasts municipal announcements.]

Lindgren stressed however, that local news outlets need to earn such financial support.

“You have to produce content that really matters to your community and be engaged with that community in a way that is meaningful and visible and consistent,” she said.

This is the first in a two-part series. Next, ideas from participants at the Mt. A. symposium on how local media might survive (and thrive) in these times of financial crisis.

Posted in Mount Allison University, Town of Tantramar | Tagged , | 1 Comment

ATV clubs seeking greater access to Tantramar streets and roads

Posted on June 11, 2025 by brucewark

Vance Johnson of QUAD NB

QUAD NB, the association that represents 59 ATV clubs in the province, is seeking the town’s support for all-terrain vehicle access to three residential streets in Sackville so that club members could ride legally to the parking lot at The Painted Pony Bar & Grill on Bridge Street.

During a presentation to Tantramar Council on Tuesday, Vance Johnson trail co-ordinator with QUAD NB, proposed that ATVs be allowed to operate for 200 metres on Squire Street, 100 metres on Princess and 500 metres on Weldon.

Riders would gain access to those streets from the existing ATV trail that runs beside the TransCanada highway.

Noting that ATV riders can already ride legally on Mallard Drive and Wright Street in the highway commercial zone, Johnson drew a distinction between those who come to Sackville for gatherings and events and those who come as tourists.

“They just want to stay, gas up, get their food, fill their belly and away they go,” he said referring to traditional riders who stop at the fast food restaurants, gas stations, liquor and grocery stores on Wright and Mallard.

“The tourists are on their own agenda,” he said. “So. bring them into the downtown. They want to go shopping.”

Councillor Josh Goguen

When Councillor Josh Goguen expressed concerns about ATV traffic volumes and noise on Squire, Princess and Weldon, Johnson replied that ATVs are required to have mufflers that do not typically violate municipal noise bylaws.

“We’re not opening any floodgates here by any means,” he said of the traffic volumes. “You won’t see them, large groups, huge groups, like at an event, for instance. They won’t be coming here by the hundreds.”

Johnson said ATV clubs prefer to avoid residential areas, adding that his proposal is only a draft and there may be better alternatives.

He noted that in May, the provincial department of transportation and infrastructure (DTI) had rejected an earlier proposal to allow ATVs to travel to the downtown core via Main and Bridge Streets because traffic volumes are already high on those roads.

Johnson presented council with two maps showing that QUAD NB is also requesting access to roads on the outskirts of Sackville including 500 metres on Station Road, 6.4 kilometres on Mount View and 600 metres on Walker Road as well as greater access to Dorchester via Lower Walker Road, Woodlawn, Lower Fairfield and Cherry Burton.

To view those maps, click here.

Mayor Andrew Black

Mayor Andrew Black suggested that ATV access to Mallard Drive and Wright Street hasn’t caused problems for residents there.

“I haven’t personally heard of anybody who lives in that area being concerned or voicing concern over noise levels or even the amount of ATVs,” he said.

“So we do have a bylaw in the books already that seems to be working very well.”

On behalf of QUAD NB, Johnson asked council for a general letter of support, so that his organization can move forward with applications to provincial officials in public safety, DTI and the department of natural resources.

He also emphasized that his current proposals for access to town roads and streets are only preliminary.

“So we would be working with council or somebody within the municipality to come up with that final draft,” he said before submitting it for provincial approval.

Posted in Town of Tantramar | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Differing local views on the ‘Roaring Lion’ thief’s two-year prison sentence

Posted on May 30, 2025 by brucewark

The famous “Roaring Lion” photo of Winston Churchill was taken by Yousuf Karsh in 1941. Photo: Wikipedia

Prominent Tantramar photographer Thaddeus Holownia says he was astounded when he heard that the man who stole the “Roaring Lion” photo of Winston Churchill had been sentenced to two years in prison.

“It just seemed really, really severe for what actually happened, what the crime was,” Holownia said today during a telephone interview.

He added that the prominence and iconic status of the photo should not have had any bearing on the sentencing.

“It’s an important image, it’s iconic on some level or another to some people while for others, it’s just a picture of Winston Churchill,” he said.

“I don’t know how important that should have been in sentencing this poor gentleman.”

Holownia pointed out that the thief, Jeffrey Wood, had been trying to raise money to help his brother who suffered from a mental disorder.

He had no previous criminal record, pleaded guilty and expressed remorse.

Theft went unnoticed

In his judgment, Ontario Justice Robert Wadden wrote that Wood stole the photo from Ottawa’s Chateau Laurier hotel sometime in January 2022 replacing it with a cheap copy that carried a forged signature of the well-known Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh who had donated it to the hotel for permanent public display.

“As this was during the pandemic,” the judge wrote, “there was less activity than usual in the hotel. The theft went unnoticed for months.”

Wood sold the original photo through Sotheby’s auction house in London which estimated its sale price at approximately $26,000 CDN, but because it was damaged in transit, the famous photo went to an Italian lawyer in Genoa for just under $10,000 with Wood receiving about $4,500.

(The Italian collector, Nicola Cassinelli, voluntarily gave the photo back to the Chateau Laurier where it is now on display.)

Karsh snatches Churchill’s cigar

Justice Wadden reported that Karsh snapped the photo in 1941 just after Churchill had spoken to Canada’s Parliament about British determination to defeat Nazi Germany and its Axis allies during the Second World War.

“Karsh’s portrait session with Churchill was scheduled to last only two minutes,” Justice Wadden wrote, adding:

As Karsh was preparing, Churchill was smoking a cigar, which Karsh asked him to put down so the smoke did not interfere with the picture. Churchill refused, so just before taking the photograph, Karsh moved forward and snatched the cigar from Churchill’s mouth. The resulting belligerent scowl came to epitomize the fierce glare of the leader of a nation fearlessly confronting its enemy.

In 2016, the Bank of England used the Karsh photo of Churchill on its new five pound, plastic note. Image: Bank of England

Meantime, retired Mount Allison Fine Arts Professor Virgil Hammock says he feels that the two-year sentence is just about right because it will deter others from stealing and selling art.

At the same time, he says it was “sort of a victimless crime” not at all on the scale of what the Nazis did in their systematic plunder of European art treasures.

Hammock studied photography after enlisting in the U.S. Army and ended up taking photos in Korea in the late 1950s.

After that, he started in the photography program at the San Francisco Art Institute before switching to the study of painting.

“I’ve got quite a few books on Karsh,” he says.

“I admire his work. He’s a real master photographer, especially a master of using light.”

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To read the full Ontario Court of Justice ruling including the judge’s reasoning for the two-year prison sentence, click here.

For more about Thaddeus Holownia, click here.

To read Virgil Hammock’s extensive writings about Beauty & Art, click here.

NOTE: Although Churchill was a British hero during the Second World War, he was also an unapologetic racist who defended the many atrocities his country committed when it ruled over hundreds of millions in the world’s largest Empire.

Tantramar Councillor Bruce Phinney poses with the “Roaring Lion” while attending the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference earlier this month in Ottawa

Posted in Arts, Mount Allison University, Town of Tantramar | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Tantramar Council OKs new code of conduct with tougher penalties

Posted on May 17, 2025 by brucewark

Councillor Bruce Phinney speaks against new code of conduct

Tantramar Town Council has adopted a new Code of Conduct bylaw that would allow for the suspension of any member of council for up to 90 days without pay.

Councillor Bruce Phinney, who has been sanctioned three times under previous codes of conduct, was the only member to speak and vote against the new bylaw on third and final reading. (Councillor Barry Hicks also voted against the new bylaw on second reading.)

Phinney referred to critical comments from Mount Allison Politics Professor Geoff Martin who told Warktimes in February that the new code could violate Charter of Rights guarantees of free speech and freedom of association.

Phinney also said he had spoken to two human resources experts who suggested members of council should not be allowed to sit in judgment on each other.

“In some cases the council may say, ‘I don’t like that councillor and I don’t like what they’re doing, so we’re going to find a way to put them in their place,” Phinney added.

Mayor Andrew Black suggested the town’s lawyers did not see any conflict with the Charter of Rights and that members of council are always free to express differences of opinion.

“That’s why we’re here. That’s what we should be doing,” he added.

If everybody just believed the same thing, then we would just be rubber stamping everything all the time,” Black continued.

Mayor Andrew Black

“But what’s not okay is if it gets potentially disrespectful or whatever, puts the municipality at a potential and serious risk,” the mayor said referring to the possibility of costly lawsuits that could arise if members of council made irresponsible or disparaging comments about each other, town staff or members of the public.

Councillor Debbie Wiggins-Colwell was absent from Tuesday’s meeting, but spoke against the 90-day suspension at previous meetings on the grounds that it could deprive her ward of representation on council.

Wiggins-Colwell herself was found guilty of violating a previous code of conduct when she took personal charge of restoring Dorchester’s giant shorebird statue in time for the 2023 Sandpiper Festival and the return of the migrating birds to the Bay of Fundy in August.

In 2022, Councillor Phinney lost two months pay and his prescription drug coverage for that period after he suggested Sackville’s hiring practices were unfair because “family members are being hired.”

He was also sanctioned for saying Mount Allison students from outside the area should vote where they came from instead of casting their ballots here.

To read my coverage, click here.

Posted in Town of Tantramar | 4 Comments

The more water you use in Sackville, the cheaper it gets

Posted on May 3, 2025 by brucewark

A Mount Allison University politics professor says the leaflet included in the latest quarterly Sackville water and sewer bills makes it difficult to compare the rate increases that small residential users are facing with those for larger consumers such as apartment building owners and commercial operators.

In an e-mail to Warktimes, Mario Levesque says that if the town had included the percentage increases in brackets under the dollar figures for residential users, people would see that the percentage increases for smaller water users are roughly double those for the bigger consumers.
“Even if the town did not intend to mislead customers, the end result is still very misleading,” Levesque writes.

Tantramar Treasurer Michael Beal says the town chose to report the residential figures in dollar amounts so that those users could see at a glance what their minimum quarterly charge will be if they use 30-cubic metres or less every three months.

(30-cubic metres would fill a backyard pool that is five metres or 16.4 feet long, three metres or 9.8 feet wide and two metres or 6.5 feet deep.)

Beal confirmed that the percentage increases Levesque calculated for residential users are correct and that as water use increases over the minimum amount, the percentage increases drop.

“The person who uses more will pay a lower percentage, but will pay more dollar wise year-over-year,” Beal explains in an e-mail that also included the following water and sewer use chart for 30, 60 and 100 cubic metre users:

click to enlarge

Beal points out, that as the chart shows, water and sewer operations charges (as measured by meters) rise with increasing consumption, but water and sewer treatment charges are billed at the flat rate of $45.00 each in every quarter this year.

The total annual bill this year for residential consumers who use 30 cubic metres or less is $615.60; for 60 cubic metre users, it’s $871.20 and for 100 cubic metre users, it’s $1,212.

“The more you use, the less you pay per cubic metre,” Levesque says. “No incentive to conserve there.”

Beal also provided charts showing that customers who use 150 cubic metres or less per quarter are paying $3,078 this year for a 3-inch pipe and meter service and $4,356 for a 4-inch one.

Customers who use 300 cubic metres or less per quarter pay $6,156 this year for a 3-inch service and $8,712 for a 4-inch one.

For my report on how and why Sackville began gradually increasing its water and sewer rates starting in 2017, click here.

Posted in Town of Sackville | Tagged | 1 Comment