Columns and Letters

Column: Scuttlebutt: MacMaster called to the mat

- by Bill Dunphy

It might have been more prudent for Inverness MLA Allan MacMaster to have contacted someone in Port Hood before putting the blame on the municipality for something that, in effect, hasn’t really happened.
    In a press release last week, MacMaster announced that Dunmore Development, an Antigonish company, put its plan for an 80-unit housing project in Inverness on hold because the county hasn’t provided a cost-estimate to extend sewer and water to the proposed site just east of the Inverness Education Centre Academy on Veteran’s Memorial Court. According to a CBC report, Dunmore’s Amanda Knight said the project has been put on hold for now.
    Umm, what exactly has changed? It’s been on hold since 2018 while waiting for the county to get ‘er done. But given a $103 million infrastructure deficit in the county – $40 million in District #3 alone – along with infrastructure projects in Inverness, Whycocomagh, and Judique already in the works, all of which happening in the middle of COVID-19, well, something has to give.
    All of it sounds like a little gamesmanship going on, perhaps a move by Dunmore, through MacMaster, to get things moving quicker. It certainly doesn’t sound like Dunmore has dropped the plan altogether. You have to think that if an idea to develop an 80-unit housing project...in a town with no housing...was a good idea in 2018, it will be a good idea in 2020, 2021, or whenever someone builds it.
    MacMaster definitely ruffled the feathers of county council, and if the squeaky wheel gets the grease, then running water and sewer lines, and extending the road, up to the proposed housing development site will certainly be moved to the front burner.
    Meanwhile, MacMaster has been called to the mat...I mean MacMaster has been invited...to the next council meeting so that he can “gain a more detailed and factual update on the work that the municipality has underway to improve infrastructure throughout the county and in the community of Inverness.”
*****
    If anyone with a boom truck is going to be in the vicinity of West Mabou in the next several days, then Derrick Cameron wants to talk to you.
    All that’s needed to complete the work on the West Mabou Hall and Sports Complex tennis courts is to install the LED lights on the existing poles and wire the switch.
    You have to admire the community spirit shown by the members of the West Mabou Development Association in persevering with their revitalization project with the hall and tennis courts. While in need of funding now, that won’t be the case once they can start holding family square dances and other musical events at the iconic hall. Committed to making the repairs before the COVID-19 state of emergency shut everything down, the group made the right decision to keep going. As we have seen too often in small rural communities, once you lose a hall, or a church, or a store, or a sports team, it is almost impossible to get it back again. Board members retire, volunteers disappear, the infrastructure crumbles, and the community becomes accustomed to doing without whatever it was that it had. I hope West Mabou, which recently lost its ball field, never has to get used to doing without its hall and tennis courts.
*****
    Just how desperate have we become to see our lives return to something that resembles normal?
    No sooner was the decision made to start up the Inverness Mixed Darts League again than registration for the league was full! I’m pretty sure there has never been a full registration without holding a couple of registration nights, and even then, there would be a team or two still looking for an extra full-time player.
    The league is scheduled to start on Wednesday, Sept. 30, complete with masks and darts. And even though the teams are filled, there is always a need for spares.
*****
    I totally get why Mi’kmaw fishers want to participate in the lucrative lobster fishery. It’s their right to fish and hunt for a “moderate living” – whatever that means. It’s a right that’s entrenched in treaties and it’s right that was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada in the so-called Marshall decision.
    What I fail to get, and maybe someone will be so kind as to enlighten me, is why are the Mi’kmaw fishers so hell-bent on exercising their right outside of the seasons determined by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans? It has been my belief that fishing seasons, size limits, trap sizes, and spawning considerations are based on science. If there’s one reason that the lobster fishery is lucrative it’s because of the conservation efforts that ensure the stock doesn’t become decimated like the cod fishery was.
    I have been on lobster boats during season and I was struck by how many lobsters get thrown back during the run of a day. This one’s too small or this female is carrying eggs. I can’t say for sure, but I would guess that for every lobster that is kept, three or four are returned to the ocean.
    That there is animosity and tension between non-Indigenous and Mi’kmaw fishers falls at the feet of DFO Minister Bernadette Jordan. The failure to bring the Mi’kmaw into the industry in a timely fashion and under federal regulations has created the mess the two groups find themselves in. And as long as one group can fish when they want to and harvest as much as what can be considered a moderate living, then what’s the point of the other group abiding by a two-month season in which to make their living? The end result will be the same for both groups: empty traps.
*****
    On Sunday, the Dallas Cowboys did something no team in the NFL has done in 87 years. They beat a team, the Atlanta Falcons, that scored 39 points and didn’t surrender a turnover. Up until then, teams with that many points and no turnovers won 440 times. That record is now 440-1, but I still didn’t get my three-pointer in the football pool. Being a Cowboys’ fan in football is like being a Leafs’ fan in hockey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 






 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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