In Part 1, I focused on how mainstream media isn’t what it used to be because of downsizing, and how as a result, we aren’t being served as well as we used to be when it comes to information and holding our institutions accountable. In short, the whole Substack was kind of a downer.

In Part 2, I want to focus on some positives, how some mainstream media is bucking the trend, and how independent journalism and other credible voices are beginning to fill some of the void.

No question social media has changed how we receive and process information.

There is more of a mistrust of mainstream media today, some of it deserved, most of it not.

There is more misinformation than ever before, served up on social media, too much of it believed.

Combined, it makes for a more challenging environment for mainstream reporters. Unlike the keyboard warriors that pump out and share whatever they want to Facebook or Youtube or on whatever other social media platforms they use, without being burdened by fact-checking, real journalists do need to make sure what they say is correct. So it takes longer.

Related, another of the many reasons I thank my lucky stars I’m no longer a journalist is that I would never want to be faced with some big story that is tearing up social media when I have a deadline closing in and no luck trying to verify whether said story is true.

That reason I think is number 10, just after not wanting to put up with newsmakers refusing to give an interview but instead emailing talking points that may vaguely have a connection to the questions I want answered, a practise that the media has allowed to become commonplace.

So yeah, the media environment has changed. Social media has made a dramatic difference. The biggest one being that Facebook and the like have taken the vast majority of advertising revenue from the traditional media, necessitating aforementioned layoffs.

But it’s not all doom and gloom.

Some traditional media are actually doing more with less. Up in the St. Stephen-St. Andrews area, Vicki Hogarth and her team are bucking the trend with CHCO-TV and the Courier, providing a service to its local communities that the rest of the province can only envy.

Same with The River Valley Sun where Theresa Blackburn is publishing, online daily and in print monthly, solid local news to Upper Saint John River communities.

These two outlets are evidence traditional local media can deliver still deliver local journalism their viewers and readers can trust.

But increasingly, some of that void is being filled online by people or teams publishing Substacks, newsletters, podcasts and independent news sites.

Often these are people with journalism experience bringing those professional traits to cyberspace. In that space though, they are competing with a whole lot of people who don’t meet those standards, keyboard warriors who aren’t burdened by such things as fact-checking or balance.

But I notice a trend toward the better ones emerging above the fray and developing a reputation for solid, accurate reporting. In short, content you can count on.

In Fredericton an example of this is Don MacPherson, one of several former Daily Gleaner reporters caught in one of their purges. He’s now publishing the Fredericton Independent, focusing on the courts and police. It is Monday as I am writing this, and from when I started to now, I have read Don’s report on a police action on St. Mary’s Street, and then his update with news of a stabbing and an arrest. Up to the minute local content I can trust as accurate.

A great regional example of a new media organization that is doing excellent investigative work is the Halifax Examiner. Since Tim Bousquet founded it in 2014, It has continued to win awards for excellence in journalism by exposing wrongs and holding the powers that be accountable. It’s strictly online, and has found a way to be sustainable without advertisers, focused on subscribers and donations as its source of revenue. It is a model of enterprising journalism that people in New Brunswick might find inspiring and worth emulating.

We need a Halifax Examiner-type operation here more than ever. But it’s just one example of a journalism model that is filling the void created by the demise of traditional media. There are others.

Many though, aren’t doing traditional journalism, but are contributing to intelligent dialogue through podcasts and Substacks, based on analysis of what’s happening in the news.

One of these that has emerged as one of the good ones is Letter from a Maritimer, produced by B. Elisabeth Rybak. She doesn’t have a journalism background, but established credibility in political science, technology and business. She offers up solid analysis of various political and economic developments, often with a focus on what they could mean to us in Atlantic Canada. I find her content, whether political or otherwise, always well-written and thoughtful.

Then there’s the audio-focused Canadaland, founded by Jesse Brown. It is podcast based and runs out of Toronto so not regionally but nationally focused. It’s been around for quite a few years now and has done some remarkable investigative reporting of stories no other media has touched. According to its website, it has grown to 10,000 supporters and has hit 10 million listeners a year. I have long been a subscriber and consider its credibility up there among the best.

As a bonus, Canadaland has developed CanadaLabs, part of which includes offering undergraduate or masters students or new-to-audio journalists, paid, four month placements working alongside their seasoned pros. I think this is especially important in these days of very limited journalistic opportunities, as it adds to a new generation of qualified journalists. And god knows we’re going to need them.

Obviously there are other trustworthy social media sources out there, including in our region, I just haven’t discovered them yet. If you know of any that have caught your attention, let me know.

My point is that in the absence of much of the traditional newsroom reporting we used to get, there are credible independent voices emerging to fill some of the void—but the public now has a new responsibility: figuring out which ones deserve to be trusted.

There still aren’t enough doing the actual feet-on-the-ground work—digging for answers, doing interviews, covering council meetings, and all the other unglamorous work of journalism.

Whether enough of them emerge to sufficiently replace what we’ve lost and are continuing to lose, remains to be seen.

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There was an intelligent thread on Facebook a couple of weeks back, and no, “intelligent thread on Facebook” is not an oxymoron. Not in this case anyway.

This one focused on the state of mainstream media, prompted by Conservative MLA Bill Oliver’s faux pas where, in a speech, he mistakenly read AI instructions on how to make his speech seem more authentic. In short, he read the quiet part out loud, inadvertently sharing that an AI chatbot wrote at least some of his speech for him.

But that wasn’t the focus of the thread. It was started by former Fredericton media guy Andrew Holland, who lamented the fact that the only reason we heard about it was because it went viral on social media, and this was several weeks after the speech was presented. His point was that there was a time when local news organizations would have reported on it when it happened. Or put another way, if it wasn’t for the video clip going viral, we would not have known about it at all.

It’s a point well taken.

Another Facebook thread around that time was prompted by the shutting down of the presses that spit out the TJ, Gleaner and Times and Transcript, the latter for the past 158 years.

Yet another thread was prompted by Rogers shutting down several of its radio stations, including its Newsradio operation in Halifax. Then there were the recent layoffs by Bell Media and Global.

Then there’s Postmedia, the company that bought the Irving newspapers a few years back. The decline of these papers has continued since then, with newsrooms gutted and francophone publications closed down completely.

Taken together, it amounts to traditional newsrooms being a shadow of their former selves.

And perhaps that’s the part that is hardest to appreciate if you didn’t work in a newsroom. Losing a reporter isn’t simply losing another byline or on-air voice. It means losing someone whose job was to be somewhere, ask questions, make phone calls, attend meetings and notice when something didn’t look right.

For context, when I was News Director at CFNB (anybody remember CFNB?) we had a staff of 6 people, four including me working on the news side, and two as the sports department. We covered everything, with reporters at city hall, the courts, school board meetings, the legislature, running out to fires, whatever. And if that fire was substantial and it was three in the morning, there was someone on call who would get to the scene as quickly as possible. And the sports guys were all over local sports. That doesn’t happen anymore.

Private radio has largely dropped the ball on covering local news, and as far as I can see, television doesn’t have the resources to have reporters regularly work evenings. The same can be said of the handful of newspaper reporters who are still employed. Of course, there is the odd exception, but for the most part, if something happens outside normal business hours, it’s like if a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one around, does it still make a sound?

And that gets to my point – a healthy democracy depends on somebody paying attention.

Somebody has to be sitting in council chambers. Somebody has to be watching the courts. Somebody has to be asking why the police did something, or why the hospital or education board made a particular decision. Somebody has to notice the seemingly insignificant thing that turns out not to be insignificant at all.

Bill Oliver only went viral because people found his mistake embarrassing and funny, not because it was important. But it does beg the question: What important stories are we not hearing about because no journalist is there, because the tree fell and no one was around?

In Part 2, I’ll look at what’s emerging to at least partially fill the void. That will drop Thursday morning.

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Now about the photo - that’s me in our CFNB Newsroom back in the mid to late 70s, back in the days of (and this is for you of a certain age) - “CFNB - Where New Brunswick hears the News”.

OK. Now that I have got that out there, let’s look at one of those specifics. Given the Gordie Howe bridge is just opening, let’s look at that.

Canada builds the thing on its own dime, in fact $6.4 Billion, with the understanding that we would recover that cost through tolls and after that, revenues would be shared 50/50. Win-win right?

But Trump can’t conceive of win-win as a concept because to him, there has to be a winner and a loser, so he had to stick his nose in. Forget for the moment that his administration delayed the bridge opening, a manoeuvre that resulted in Trump’s billionaire buddy and major donor, making more money from tolls on the old and inefficient bridge, which he owned. Forget about that part.

To Trump, it was a terrible deal that the US signed, getting a bridge for nothing. He never explained how it was a bad deal, because of course he didn’t.

It would be like you or me building a store. And just when we were ready to open, Tony Soprano shows up and says – nice store you have here. It’s a shame if no one uses it. But that will be the case unless you give me half the revenue it generates. Did I say Tony Soprano? I meant Donald Trump.

It’s a shame, and disappointing, that there hasn’t been more outrage aimed at the President over this. Most Canadian media called it for what it was, a shakedown, but major American media framed it more as just part of tariff negotiations.

But aside from the media, the criticism from Poilievre and Conservatives is aimed more at Carney for buckling under pressure and refusing to be firm, for allowing Trump to “get away” with this obvious extortion, than it is at Trump for being a (insert your favourite descriptor here).

Poilievre’s wrath directed at Carney begs the question - what would he have done? For that matter, if you were Prime Minister what would you have done facing this kind of extortion?

Would you stand firm, based on the principled position that we had an agreement? Really? With a guy who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about agreements, signed or otherwise? Who doesn’t care that an idle bridge is hurting companies and consumers on both sides of the border?

So you stand firm and the bridge stands unused – how is that a win?

So instead Carney swallows this bitter pill and opens the bridge. Perhaps it makes him look weak in the eyes of some and gives Trump his ill-gotten win, but the tolls are almost insignificant in the big picture when you consider the bridge will facilitate $1 Billion of economic activity every day. The reduced costs in moving goods in both directions will benefit both economies greatly.

So there’s that. We can be outraged at Trump for acting like a mob boss. And we can wonder why Poilievre’s criticism isn’t directed more at him. Actually, we don’t really have to wonder about that. Poilievre’s criticism of Trump has always been measured, because roughly 15 percent of his conservative base are Trump supporters and he can’t afford to alienate them. That’s the math of it.

None of that however, excuses what happened next.

What was Mark Carny thinking when he was, how should I put this – less than forthright - in levelling with Canadians over the “renegotiated” arrangement for the bridge. And by “less than forthright” I mean dishonest. He said that under the new deal, we would still get our costs back before the 50/50 revenue sharing kicked in.

Thanks to Bloomberg News breaking details of the new arrangement, we found out that wasn’t the case at all. So under pressure, Carny then agrees, not that he wasn’t honest with us, but that his failure was that he wasn’t clear enough in his explanation.

So even when it’s exposed that what he claimed wasn’t accurate, he chooses to dig the hole deeper by not acknowledging as much, understandably a very hard thing to do, but rather, just dismissing it as a lack of clarity, a “whoops” moment.

I don’t get it. As I said at the outset, I thank my lucky stars that Carney is our PM in these challenging times, and not the other guy. I shudder to think what an even bigger mess we’d be in under Poilievre. I fear he would have sold the farm by now.

But that said, why in the world did Carney think he could get away with not being straight with us? Was he just trying to avoid being criticized as weak? But more on point - Did he not think the details would emerge eventually?

Being straightforward is about credibility, and credibility is something that is hard to earn and easy to lose.

Carney didn’t lose mine entirely—but he certainly spent some of it

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Anyone who has tried to deal with bureaucracy knows the feeling: rules, delays, dead ends, and the sense that no one is empowered to simply solve the problem. Usually, it’s frustrating. Sometimes, for vulnerable people, it can be so much more than frustration.

By now you have probably heard about Child and Youth Advocate Kelly Lamrock’s damning report on the Department of Social Development’s Youth Engagement Services or YES program. Its name has changed, but its purpose remains to give health, housing, education and other support to youth aged 16 to 18 who can’t live safely with a parent.

That’s what it is supposed to do. But Lamrock’s report lays out details where the program failed vulnerable youth. Among them, a homeless teen who had overdosed and reached out for addiction help but was denied – he later died….of an overdose. He had been told that because they couldn’t reach his mother for a social worker to determine his home situation, that he didn’t qualify.

Lamrock’s report details another case that illustrates the consequences. A teen who was pregnant and staying at a homeless shelter was told she had to be homeless for three months before she could qualify for help.

Another teen was denied help after officials concluded she should move out of province to live with her mother — despite the fact the mother was living with someone facing sexual assault charges involving another family member.

Lamrock’s says these 3 cases are among 35 that his office has identified where the system failed to provide needed help.

In response, Social Development Minister Cindy Miles apologized to these youth, saying none of this should have happened. And while she is saying all the right things about getting to the bottom of this and fixing it, including working with the Opposition parties, she stopped short of agreeing to act on Lamrock’s three recommendations.

They include forming a legislative committee to hear testimony on these issues, a third party review on what the criteria for help should be, and implementing a system to track applicants and refusals so that accountability can be measured.

Those recommendations sound appropriate and achievable. But Minister Miles isn’t there yet. I’m a little surprised at that, as from everything I know about the Minister, she really does care. But rather than agreeing that yes, these are solid recommendations and we will immediately implement them, she is instead saying that some of the issues Lamrock identified have already being dealt with, and other changes will come. But no timelines have been offered.

Lamrock isn’t the only one critical of Department of Social Development’s management of the program, and they too are ready with suggested improvements.

Miguel LeBlanc, Executive Director of the Association of New Brunswick Social Workers points out that social workers have the expertise to help but the Department doesn’t include any in its Executive Team.

Partners for Youth Executive Director John Sharpe goes even further. He says the Department of Social Services should no longer manage the program. He says they have proven over different governments and through changes at the leadership level that they can’t be counted on to make the right decisions. He says rather than bureaucrats from the department assessing applications, a tribunal of people who work with youth should be the ones reviewing cases and making decisions on who should get help.

So there’s the Child and Youth Advocate, the Association of Social Workers, and Partners for Youth, all calling what’s going on unacceptable, and all suggesting how to fix it.

But with no commitment to anything more specific than a promise of improvements, we can only wait and see what the Minister actually does. The fact it is not a new problem specific to this government suggests it’s not only a policy issue, but something more systemic.

Given this, I wonder whether there will be any accountability demanded of those on the front lines, for the people who are deciding to say no despite the dire situation many of these young people are in, just because their case didn’t check all the right boxes. Did any of these people go to bat for these kids, perhaps going to superiors or managers to get a needed exemption or a change in the rules? Or did they just tell them no, and leave it at that?

It’s one thing to change the rules, the criteria, whatever. It’s obviously necessary. But it should be necessary as well to make sure the right people are in place, so that their focus is providing help when help is needed, not being so uncaring or lacking in empathy that all that matters is following policy to the letter.

The government has acknowledged these failures should never have happened. The question now is whether that acknowledgment leads to measurable change — or whether vulnerable youth will once again be told to wait.

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Changing the Subject Completely, I want to take a moment to recommend to my subscribers a Substack I recently discovered.

It is called Dewatered, and it is written by native Miramichier Roger Clowater. I met Roger years ago when he was a Saint John police officer and I was conducting communications workshops. But until recently I had no idea he went on to major in writing at university and has become, in my humble opinion, very good at it. And while some of his pieces are from those policing days, others are memories of growing up in the Miramichi and other simply slice-of-life stories from his experiences, from tragedy to nostalgia to hilarious. The common denominator is that they are all well-crafted and offer a great escape from all the political stuff.

I will admit I have only read four or five of them so far, but enough that he has me going back for more. So give him a try. You can thank me later.

______________________________________

Thanks for reading my Substack. Likes, shares, comments, small bills stuffed under our doormat – it’s all appreciated. And if you’d like to Subscribe, it’s free. Just type in your email below and you’ll get notified whenever a new one drops.

You have probably seen a lot of buzz on social media, and by “buzz” I mean outrage, over a special city council meeting called for yesterday on the issue of expropriation of the Exhibition Grounds. Having a special meeting one day before a new council is elected did strike me as rather unusual. Like others have mentioned, I had never seen anything like this before. Usually any government, including municipal, restrains itself from doing much when it is in its lame duck phase. In short, it smelled bad.

There was a lot of council bashing going on, especially aimed at the mayor. But someone posted the link to the actual meeting, so rather than shoot from the hip, I decided to check it out because - facts. I wanted to see what rationale the mayor could possibly have for taking such an unusual step.

The meeting started with Mayor Rogers acknowledging that the timing was unfortunate but that she was acting under direction of counsel and senior staff, who advised if the report from the Provincial Expropriations Officer is received in time, a council meeting should be called before the election. And since the report came in just before 5pm on Friday, she was following the direction she was given in calling the meeting. She added that to withhold this information from council given that it had come in, would have been wrong.

The city’s Chief Administrative Officer, Steven Hart also spoke, also acknowledging the unfortunate timing by saying he wished the report had arrived earlier but since it did arrive, that it would not be appropriate for staff to withhold it from council until after the election.

This explanation flies in the face of those who are trying to make this appear as something unethical, as an effort to jam something through that the new council would be stuck with.

On that specific point, Councillor Greg Ericson made it crystal clear that the decisions made at this special meeting would not bind the future council in any way whatsoever. He says, in fact, he intended to vote for the expropriation to go ahead, as such a vote would mean the new council can proceed to do whatever it decides unencumbered, as it would not have to go through the whole expropriation process again.

So, it appears there was nothing underhanded at all – just a council following proper process, as advised. It would appear all the gnashing of teeth over this meeting was, as Shakespeare would say, much ado about nothing. If you want to see for yourself how that council meeting went down, here you go – fill your boots: https://tinyurl.com/47fazcwc

Whether fair or not, perception often matters more than process in the social media age.

The posts on the special council meeting underlines how much social media and specifically Facebook have become a huge part of the civil discourse in this campaign. And just as there was a lot of online criticism over yesterday’s special council meeting, there has also been a lot of online criticism of Jenica Atwin over her crossing the floor from the Greens to the Liberals when she was an MP.

The conservative base in this city seems to have closed ranks behind her opponent Steve Hicks, and they are driving much of this narrative. So much so, that Atwin’s camp seems to have made a strategic mistake by ignoring it. Unless I missed it, I have seen no reference to why she switched alligence in any of her social media videos or on her website.

My advice would have been to ignore it at first too, because as they say in politics, when you are explaining you are losing. Or, as I’m sure they would have preferred, out of sight, out of mind.

But once it became a dominant issue online, it had turned into the elephant in the room, overshadowing the rest of her messaging. At that point, she needed to pivot, with a short and convincing explanation of why. Mind you that’s just my opinion, others may differ. But anyone familiar with the backstory can at least understand why she may have felt she was left with little choice: cross the floor or quit altogether. But quitting could be seen as letting supporters down as well. Dealing with it might have allowed more voters to move past the issue and focus on her actual platform, which is fairly solid, particularly on public safety and homelessness, and more broadly with a vision for the future that Hicks seems to lack.

As I said in my last Substack, on almost all issues, Atwin and Hicks are in alignment, not a whole lot of space between them on anything.

Atwin says her years as an MP have left her with an understanding of how the system works, and with contacts to help attract federal and provincial partners for projects that will help move the city forward, such as on affordable housing. She says a priority will be public safety and homelessness.

Hicks doesn’t even have a platform, and strangely, he has adopted for his campaign slogan “A Time for Change”, something you don’t expect to hear from an 18-year incumbent. He says his focus will also be on public safety and homelessness. And on keeping taxes down.

Frankly, I don’t know who will win. I know who I would like to see win, and that person will get my vote. But I think either one of the candidates will do their best. They may have different approaches, but I don’t doubt both Atwin and Hicks would work in what they believe is the best interests of the city. And will any luck, we’ll have a dozen solid councillors to keep them honest, if they stray.

So to the winners - congratulations - you have earned your shot. We’ll be watching you. To those who didn’t make it, thanks for throwing your hat in the ring. You have played a crucial role in the process, and I hope you take some positives from the experience.

Ah democracy. Churchill was right.

Less than a week ago, the out of the cold shelter on the Exhibition Grounds closed, leaving most of the people who relied on it with nowhere to go. Fredericton Homeless Shelters Executive Director Warren Maddox did what he could to secure an alternative arrangement, but kept running into roadblocks at every turn. Maddox says the Department of Social Development wasn’t the problem, the city was.

As a result, the number of people in our community living rough, has increased by about 30 souls. And this is at a time when we’re just days away from a municipal election where the issue of public safety and homelessness has emerged as the ballot issue.

Related to the election, there’s quite a fuss on social media over outgoing mayor Kate Rogers sporting a tee-shirt with “Fredericton is Fine” printed on it. A political statement for sure, and not one I would have advised, but the over-reaction to it is a head shaker.

Quite a few people have taken to Facebook to declare in no uncertain terms that Fredericton is “definitely not fine”. They base that on the homeless problem, suggesting these people represent a safety issue, contribute to crime, and make the downtown feel less safe and less attractive to business. Some go further, implying that candidate Steve Hicks is the solution.

I’ll get to that in a moment, but first, isn’t it rather ridiculous to go on social media to declare that Fredericton is definitely not fine? Not to put too sharp a point on it, but isn’t whether our city is “fine” or “definitely not fine” a gross oversimplification?

Wouldn’t it be better to agree that Fredericton is fine in many ways, but like every other city in North America, we have a homelessness issue that needs to be addressed? That would be much more sensible than getting upset at our outgoing mayor’s clothing choices. And it begs the question - do these critics of the mayor seriously believe that she doesn’t fully realize there is a problem here that needs attention?

I suspect that when Mayor Rogers said Fredericton is “fine,” she meant there’s a lot to be proud of here—and that there is a path forward, including the Community Safety Task Force’s 47 recommendations. That’s a bit too much to fit on a T-shirt.

This is not to say the Task Force is some kind of magic bullet that will fix this issue overnight, but it’s a path. If you want to dig into it, here’s a link to the Task Force’s final report and recommendations. https://tinyurl.com/ywtp46x8 .

Now, a few thoughts on the mayor’s race.

I don’t know either candidate personally. But I do think it is important to make an informed choice, so I attended the mayor’s forum the Fredericton Chamber organized last week.

A few things struck me from that. One is how impressive Jenica Atwin was. She speaks extremely well, seemed on top of the issues, and has a vision of how the city should progress into the future that I found quite inspiring. My personal view – yours may vary.

Steve Hicks didn’t generate that same kind of enthusiasm, not in me anyway, but he said all the right things and frankly, on the issues that matter, there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference between the two. We’re not talking Carney and Poilievre here.

So on the issues,

Are you in favour of a new Olympic-sized swimming pool? Yes and yes, but only with financial support from other levels of government. Both included this qualifier.

The Exhibition Complex property should be converted to apartments and a school? Yes and yes.

But still have a venue for shows and events like there is now? Yes and yes.

Public safety and homelessness are a top priority? Yes and yes.

You can see the pattern, but on that last one – the homelessness issue, both candidates said everything should be done to get people out of living rough as soon as possible. But Hicks has a track record on this issue and it’s not consistent with that.

Five years ago, when the John Howard Society went to the city for part of the funding that would allow them to purchase the old City Motel and turn it into housing for those who need it, city council voted against it, and Hicks was one of those on the thumbs down side. The public outcry was so much that within a couple of days the council called a special Friday night session and backtracked, reversing their decision. The Oak Centre, as it became called, has been providing shelter for people who would be otherwise homeless ever since.

If you don’t remember that, or are a bit fussy on the details of how it went down, my blog from March 23^rd of 2021 can serve as a refresher. https://tinyurl.com/5t2tj2u9

As part of that reversal, Hicks deserves credit, but candidates need to stand on their record. If it had been a real debate, he may have been pushed on that, as might have Atwin on her record. But the format of the forum didn’t allow for debate. Pity, because in a real debate the participants are often forced to get away from their prepared notes and when that happens, often more insight is revealed. Hopefully the Chamber takes note for next time.

As an aside, and I realize I may be accused of nitpicking here, but does anyone else find it a little odd that Hicks, someone who has been part of city council for 18 years, has adopted “Time for Change” as a campaign slogan. I realize that he’s referring to the mayor’s seat, but that’s going to change regardless. If I were a veteran of council and had a slogan like that, I’d be afraid people would agree. But, maybe that’s just me.

So who’s winning? I don’t have a handle on that. But if you are wondering, here’s something to take notice of - their signs. Not who has the biggest ones, or the most, but the placement. Where are they? Signs on public land are one thing, anybody can put those up. More relevant is how many are on private property? How many lawn signs, because the more signs on people’s lawns, the more support that candidate probably has.

This is getting a little long so let me wrap up with this. Come Monday evening, a mayor-elect and successful councillor candidates will celebrate. Others will be disappointed. But all, especially those who came out on the short end, will accept the results with grace, and move on. As we now know more than ever, that’s not nothing.

Thanks for reading. Comments and shares are encouraged, and subscribe if you would like a heads up on my future Substack entries. It’s free.

note: this piece has been edited from the original version to correct the name of the Task Force (Community, not Public) and the number of recommendations - 47, not 74. I blame that on my keyboard fingers not knowing which one goes first)

Lately in Fredericton, it feels more like a warning.

Because when things go wrong, they don’t go wrong evenly. The people who pay the price are almost always the ones with the fewest options.

Two recent situations make this clear.

Progress, then a pause

The low-barrier shelter at the Exhibition Centre is set to close at the end of this month. The City has plans for the property, and that’s fair enough. It was never meant to be a permeant shelter.

What’s harder to understand though, is why those plans appear to be moving ahead faster than any workable alternative for the people who rely on the facility.

Some residents have or will transition into other supportive environments, like group homes or assisted living arrangements. Others though, won’t. Some will end up back on the street, living rough.

That matters, because as Fredericton Homeless Shelters Executive Director Warren Maddox pointed out in a recent CBC interview, this is a challenging population with complex needs—mental illness, addictions, physical limitations. Many are simply not equipped to manage on their own.

He also made another point that should give pause: progress was being made with some of this notoriously hard-yo-reach population. Not perfectly, not completely—but meaningfully. Baby steps, but steps nonetheless.

And with that progress came something practical. With people housed in one place, staff could monitor their health, catch problems early, and prevent issues like infections or injuries from becoming medical emergencies, with all the costs and risks that represents.

With that facility to be closed in what is now down to two weeks, that hard gained progress and those safeguards will be gone, to be replaced likely by regression and increased risk.

Fixing what wasn’t broken

The second example hits closer to home for me.

I volunteer at the Fredericton Community Kitchen. Until recently, we served meals inside a dining room. It wasn’t just about food—it was about providing a space where people could sit, get warm, use a washroom, charge a phone. A place, however modest, that offered dinner with dignity. Sit down meals three times a day.

The vast majority of our clients are quiet, and appreciative of our service. Like other staff and volunteers, I can’t count how many times I was thanked, both in the kitchen and before and after my shifts, when I was going to or from my car. But this noted, the reality is that many of the people we serve struggle with mental illness and substance abuse, and often both. So as you might expect with such a vulnerable and challenged group, there would be disruptions from time to time.

But there was also a system. Security staff assigned to the nearby shelter were present at the kitchen entrance during meal times. So when something happened, they handled it. No biggie.

It wasn’t perfect. But it worked.

Then it changed.

A decision was made, apparently by the Department of Social Development, to limit that security presence strictly to the shelter grounds, no longer to include the kitchen. Without that security presence, disruptions increased and safety of clients, staff and volunteers did become more of a concern.

And so the difficult decision was made to close the dining hall and serve the meals through a window, in containers, to be eaten outside.

The human cost

So now they’re outside. Sitting wherever they can. Sometimes in the cold, sometimes in the rain.

The shift to move away from in kitchen dining may have solved one problem, but it created another—and it strips away something that mattered.

As Interim Executive Director of the Fredericton Community Kitchens Marco Bonadie said in media interviews this week, the mission of the Community Kitchen isn’t just to feed people. It’s to also offer them dignity and respect.

That’s the part that has taken a hit.

There’s also a cost—literal and immediate. The cost of the takeout containers run roughly $350 every three days. For an organization funded entirely through donations and grants, that’s not insignificant. Some services may have to be cut to cover it.

All of this because a working arrangement was narrowed by definition rather than adapted by need.

The pattern

Neither of these situations exists in isolation.

A shelter closes before a replacement is ready.
A security decision is made without considering how a connected service actually operates.
A system that functioned imperfectly but effectively is altered, and the consequences land exactly where you would expect.

On the people with the least margin for error.

This isn’t about bad intentions. It’s about something more frustrating: a failure to connect decisions to their real-world impact.

A final thought

There’s another old saying: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

In both of these cases, something that was at least working has been disrupted—not by necessity, but by process.

And the result isn’t abstract.

It’s visible. It’s immediate. It’s a meal eaten outside from a container while sitting on the ground, rather than inside at a table and chairs. It’s progress put at risk because timing didn’t line up with need.

If government is here to help, as they are fond of claiming, then the standard has to be more than intention. It has to be outcome.

Because when the outcome falls short, it’s not the system that absorbs the impact.

It’s the people who depend on it.

Here’s to hoping the powers that be find a solution to both of these unfortunate situations soooner as opposed to late

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Tucked away in a cupboard in what used to be my downstairs home office are four old Hilroy scribblers. They’ve been sitting there untouched for something like 35 years now.

I’m not entirely sure why I kept them, except that they hold the notes from the last major assignment I covered while working at CBC — the trial of Allan Legere. Page after page of hurried handwriting from ten weeks spent sitting in a courtroom, trying to capture every detail of a case that had the whole province on edge.

Those notebooks were one of the first things that came to mind when I heard that Legere had died.

The Trial Memories

So many memories from that – how it was the first trial where DNA evidence was a thing. I remember the extremely disturbing testimony of Nina Flam. The elderly woman told of her four hour ordeal of being beaten and repeatedly raped and then left for dead after Legere set her house on fire. She spent weeks in hospital recovering from 3^rd degree burns. But as disturbing as her story was, even more than that I remember the sensitivity shown by Judge David M. Dickson in how he guided her through her testimony, after he denied a crown motion to have her testify in private so she wouldn’t have to be in the same room as Legere was denied. I had long admired the since deceased judge, for a number of reasons, but even more after watching the professionalism and humanity with which he executed his duties that day.

And I remember the day after the jury came back with its verdict of guilty on all counts. Being on a jury can be an emotional, heart-wrenching experience. You have a person’s future life in your hands. I remember Judge Dickson did the customary thing of thanking the jury for their time and their careful attention throughout Then he did something unusual. Judges rarely comment on a jury’s verdict, and he said he never does. But this time he made an exception. He told the jurors they shouldn’t lose sleep over the verdict they had delivered. That spoke volumes.

I expect all of the reporters who shared the experience of covering that trial have their own recollections.

The trial is what those scribblers mostly contain. But my strongest memory of Legere actually comes from earlier — the morning he was finally captured.

The Broadcast Decision

I was hosting Fredericton’s CBC Information Morning program. A private radio station was reporting that morning that Legere had been captured, but the team working our show had not been able to verify that with the RCMP, so I was forbidden from mentioning anything about it on air.

If you were around at the time you will understand just how much of a big deal catching him was. He wasn’t called the Monster of the Miramichi for nothing, he earned it. People, especially folks in that area were terrified that he was on the loose, and rightly so. They were living in fear.

Long story short, in a radio show such as ours, the producer is boss. He or she decides what goes to air. When I tried to convince our producer that we should at least say that there are reports he had been arrested, she wouldn’t budge. So I did it anyway. I knew I would get raked over the coals for insubordination or whatever once the show was over, but to my thinking it was too big a story, or rumour if you want, to ignore. Sitting there in front of that live mic, I couldn’t not tell people there was reason to believe their nightmare was over. I knew if I hadn’t, I would always regret it.

I don’t remember which private radio station first reported it, but I knew there had to be something to it, that they at the very least needed to be convinced it was true. It’s not something they would ever risk getting wrong. For context, this is back at a time when private radio stations had real news departments, not like now where they have all been gutted because of cost.

I feel obliged here to add that I don’t blame the producer. Sure she made the wrong call in this case, but she was young and learning, and, not to put too fine a point on it, covering her ass from any possible embarrassment.

And while I saw this as a time to make an exception, I have great respect for CBC’s policy of verify first, then report, and you should too. CBC’s verification rule is a big part of why you can trust it. It was important then, but even more important now in these days of so much fake news, and spreading at the speed of a click. At least back in the day, we didn’t have social media to contend with, not to mention A.I., just private radio and the newspapers.

But back to Legere, his death did bring back a flood of memories. Not the scary ones some had, especially those living in the Miramichi. But for me, plenty as a radio host and journalist from his recapture to his trial.

Beginning and End of a Career

When I look back, the front end of my career was a major crime story too – it was shortly before Christmas of 1974, in Moncton. Two city police officers were murdered after a kidnapping had gone terribly wrong. This triggered a massive manhunt. One suspect was captured, and eventually so was the other. Those memories are clear as day as well – I was a young reporter at what was then CKCW Radio in Moncton, back when the station had a real newsroom.

So, the front end of my career was marked by a major crime story in Moncton, and the back end by the Legere saga. In between were decades of covering the everyday business of life in this province.

But it’s the dramatic moments that stay with you. The stories that shook communities. The people whose lives intersected briefly with mine through a notebook and a microphone.

Those four Hilroy scribblers have been sitting in that cupboard for 35 years now. Maybe they’ve served their purpose. Maybe it’s finally time to throw them away.

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The Holt government is facing mounting fiscal pressure. A higher percentage of New Brunswickers are struggling to get by because costs are up and wages are not keeping pace. Food banks are realizing more demand than ever. The government has grown the deficit to its highest level in our history, cuts are coming, and the uncertainty created by U.S. tariffs is already hurting us with the distinct possibility it will get a lot worse before it gets better.

On that last point – the tariffs – the government has earmarked $54 million in tariff relief. Of that, up to $45 million will go to Irving Paper to support the province’s last remaining paper mill and protect 183 jobs.

The Holt government has emphasized that the funding comes with strict conditions. The rationale is straightforward: preserve jobs, maintain competitiveness, stabilize an industry under pressure. In the face of tariffs, doing nothing is not an option.

On its face, the decision is understandable.

But it is also familiar.

We have seen this movie before, many times. For decades, one Irving company or another has sought and received public support, whether through direct subsidies, favourable access to Crown land, property tax arrangements, or through other avenues. Each case has been defended on economic grounds. Jobs must be saved. Industries must be protected. Governments, regardless of political stripe, have agreed.

This is not an argument that the $45 million is unnecessary. It may well be justified. The forest sector remains a pillar of our provincial economy.

But there is a broader question that rarely seems to enter the public discussion.

When a corporation seeks taxpayer assistance, should its tax behaviour be part of the conversation?

It’s no secret that right back to its beginnings, Irving Empire patriarch K.C. Irving insisted on tax havens in Bermuda to avoid paying as much tax as possible. Some of you may remember the Paradise Papers, the huge dump of millions of documents in 2017, showing the widespread use of tax avoidance by companies around the world. Those documents showed Irving companies made much use of Bermuda as the place to move income and profits, thereby avoiding millions of dollars in Canadian taxes.

There is little public reporting on whether those arrangements have changed since then, but I see no reason to assume it has stopped.

No laws have been broken. Offshore tax arrangements, while controversial, are legal under current rules. Successive federal governments, Conservative and Liberal alike, have promised to close these loopholes but have failed to do so in any transformative way.

But the moral and policy question does not disappear simply because the practice is legal.

Donald Trump said only a fool would pay more taxes than he has to. And while he’s probably not the best role model for corporations, that philosophy does seem to prevail.

If the Irvings don’t feel any moral obligation to help pay for the highways they benefit from, or the policing, or education, or any of the infrastructure costs it takes to sustain a province, if they feel providing jobs is enough, and they have chosen to keep maximizing profit through avoiding taxes through the use of offshore accounts, that’s their choice. Again, thanks to the current structure of Canada’s tax laws, it’s legal.

But if a corporation structures its affairs to minimize its tax contribution in Canada, should that reality be weighed when it later asks Canadian taxpayers for financial support?

This is not about punishing success. Nor is it about singling out one company; the use of tax havens is widespread among large corporations. It is about balance.

When profits are shifted offshore to reduce tax exposure, the burden to pay for public services shifts more heavily onto individuals and smaller businesses who do not have the same flexibility.

Estimates by Canadians for Tax Fairness suggest that corporate tax avoidance through offshore tax havens costs Canada roughly $15 billion annually in lost revenue. I’m not sure what New Brunswick’s cut of that would be, but it’s safe to assume it would make a significant difference.

The Holt government cannot rewrite federal tax law. But it does have a voice.

It can press Ottawa more forcefully to plug the tax loopholes.

It can publicly acknowledge the broader tax fairness issue when announcing financial assistance.

It can insist that discussions about public assistance include expectations about corporate contribution.

Perhaps the $45 million is necessary. Perhaps it will protect 183 families from economic hardship. And of course that matters.

But so does this: we cannot continue to describe ourselves as perpetually short of money while leaving billions legally beyond reach.

Before the next request for financial help, and there will always be a next one, there are a couple of questions worth asking.

When Irving is making its case, does the Irving companies’ long history of avoiding taxes on their profits through the use of offshore tax havens even enter into the discussion?

If it does, is there ever consideration of making taxpayer help contingent on the company making less use of said tax havens?

These are uncomfortable questions. But in a province that says it cannot afford everything its citizens need, they are questions worth asking

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If I can borrow from the late, great Jim Croce: You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, you don’t pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger — and you don’t, if you’re a politician, lie when you know you’re going to get caught.

Ah yes, the good old days. The way it used to be.

Around the time that song was popular, I was a reporter at the New Brunswick legislature. And if it ever came out that a politician had lied — if they were clearly found out — it was genuinely embarrassing for them. Sure, politicians spin facts to put themselves or their party in the best possible light. That’s always been part of the game. But outright lying was relatively rare, largely because the consequences were real. No one wanted to risk it.

That contrast comes to mind often these days — the Croce song because the lyrics about things you obviously just don’t do fit, and frankly it’s an earworm that has been stuck in my head for two days now, and the lying because it raises an obvious question: when did embarrassment disappear from politics?

By that, I’m thinking primarily of Donald Trump and those around him.

There are numerous examples, but let’s just look at recent days. You may have seen the video of an encounter involving ICE officers that ended with a woman being shot and killed in her car. Most people who watched the footage came away with serious questions about the official account. Yet Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stood before a bank of microphones and claimed the victim had tried to run over officers as they attempted to free their vehicle from a snowbank. The video showed nothing of the sort.

Sadly, that kind of false statement is no longer an outlier. This week marked the fifth anniversary of the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. The footage of police officers being attacked and beaten has been seen countless times. And yet Trump — backed by Republican politicians who were in the building that day and ran for cover themselves — continues to describe the event as peaceful. And he called that the hundreds of rioters who were convicted or pled guilty of violent crimes heroes, patriots he called them.

Also in recent days Secretary of Defence, or as he prefers to call himself Minister of War, Pete Hegseth, started the process of demoting retired Navy Major Mark Kelly and reducing his pension because the Democratic Senator reminded military personnel they have an obligation to refuse illegal orders. This is clear in the widely distributed video Kelly was part of, but in his retribution, Hegseth claims Kelly said the military should disobey LEGAL orders. Again, very obvious Hegseth is lying, but it obviously doesn’t matter to him, but could have very real consequences for Kelly. Imagine being demoted and financially hit for something you didn’t do? But this is where the country is.

Yes, the United States is more polarized than it has been since the Civil War. And yes, Trump’s circle has long relied on what his former spokesperson Kellyanne Conway memorably called “alternative facts.” But whether it’s claims that ICE is only targeting “the worst of the worst,” or more outlandish assertions about immigrants, the larger point remains: facts no longer seem to matter. Statements are made with complete confidence, even when they can be easily and publicly disproven. And there appears to be no shame attached, none at all.

From a distance, Canadians may shake their heads, perhaps with a touch of smugness, at the chaos of Trump-world. But it would be negligent to assume this climate carries no risk for us. Not so long ago, few would have imagined a U.S. president talking seriously about taking over Greenland, or floating the notion of Canada as a 51st state.

I won’t delve deeply into the specific threats to Canada, others far more knowledgeable are doing that, but the comparison matters. The normalization of political falsehoods, delivered without consequence, is contagious.

Traditionally, the media’s role has been to hold elected officials accountable by testing their claims against reality. Exposure was meant to carry a cost. But what happens when those being exposed simply don’t care? And when their supporters don’t care either?

Yes, our own politicians sometimes lie. But they are amateurs compared to Trump and company. And, importantly, most Canadian voters still expect honesty, or at least punish obvious dishonesty. That expectation acts as a check, however imperfect.

Still, what happens south of the border rarely stays there. We’ve already seen elements of Trump’s divisive playbook creep into Canadian politics. It backfired for Blaine Higgs here in New Brunswick and for Pierre Poilievre federally, but the rise of radicalized right-wing groups here mirrors trends in the United States.

The difference, for now at least, is that polarization has not completely consumed us as it has too many Americans. As Canadians, we don’t define ourselves by party loyalty. And we still expect our elected officials to respect the truth, most of the time.

That expectation may be unfashionable in some quarters. But it remains worth defending. Because once lying stops being embarrassing, democracy itself becomes far easier to damage. And much harder to repair.

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Some of you who have been reading my stuff for awhile may remember that last year, or maybe it was the year before, I posted a short story I wrote, based on my train ride home for Christmas from college in 1972. Yes, it took me 50 years plus to get around to writing it. Talk about procrastination, but I digress.

Back in the summer, Susan McElroy, a classmate from those Fanshawe College Journalism days, included it in Finally, one of her books of poems and short stories. But more than that, she wrote a companion piece, a reply to my essay, from the point of view of the woman I ended up sharing that train ride with. This will make sense if you get into it.

And in addition to the hard copy, she puts her books online, which includes video readings. So she got me to read my short story on video, followed by her reading hers, so it’s there in one package.

So if you could use a departure from the hectic pace that always seems to accompany Christmas, take a half hour off and go back to this Christmas more than 50 years ago. It was a different time, as you will understand as you get into it.

I hope you enjoyed it. Merry Christmas to you. And have a Happy New Year.

There is Life Without Social Media. That may not strike you as much of a revelation, especially if you are among those of us who grew up without it. But like many of a certain age, I found that somewhere along the line social media became a significant part of my routine. Thankfully not a life support, as it is for too many younger folks, but significant nonetheless.

A little over a week ago, I decided to try a little experiment. I’ll get to that in a minute, but first, some context - Janet and I were about to leave on one of those packaged bus tours. We were going to be on the road for eight days. To be honest, it wasn’t something I was looking forward to, but Janet was sold on it the minute she saw it included tickets to an Andrea Bocelli concert. I figured if that’s something she really wants, I’m in.

But the thought of sitting in a bus for hours upon hours for days upon days struck me as something Dante would probably have included as a punishment in his Nine Circles of Hell, had bus travel been a thing back in the 13^th century. Then I thought about the relief in Dave Dudley’s voice when he sang “Six Days on the Road (and I’m Gonna Make it Home Tonight)”, an old country hit from back in the 60’s. And for him it was six days – I’d signed up for eight.

Anyway, that was my mindset. Basically, I was doing it for Janet. But I learned somewhere along the road not to dwell on the negative for too long. So I tried to adjust my attitude. You know, look for the positives. The big one was that I wouldn’t be doing the driving. But that wasn’t enough. I needed more.

The secret, of course, was figuring out how to make good use of all that time stuck in a bus seat. Rather than just sitting there and slowing going stark raving mad, I would bring along some books from my “I want to read those” pile, and focus on reading them, plus I would have time to listen to some podcasts. Ah yes, I was going to make this work, especially when I added the pièce de resistance.

For some time I had been self-critical of the amount of time I waste on social media, everything from arguing politics with people who don’t have a clue, to falling down my own rabbit holes, reading those stupid stories that get you hooked in the first paragraph so you have to keep going to find out what this “shocking thing” was that made someone freeze in their tracks. But then, inevitably, the story goes on and on until its less than satisfactory conclusion. Or I’d waste time reading some wonderful or terrible development in politics or hockey or whatever, only to find out on digging deeper that it was all a load of crap. Free tip: If something you read makes you really excited, encouraged, disgusted or shocked, but there is no mention of it in mainstream media, or the source doesn’t check out as legitimate, those are big hints that whatever you read isn’t true.

So thinking of all that wasted time, I concluded that this bus trip was a perfect opportunity to get away from all that. So I decided to swear off social media. No Facebook or other such platforms, not engaging with any of it. Instead, I would focus on reading and listening to content developed by people smarter than I am. That’s not meant as a slight. To be clear there are lots of bright, intelligent people on social media. But they are outnumbered.

As an experiment, it was revealing. What surprised me most wasn’t what I missed, but what suddenly fit into the time social media had been quietly eating up.

For one thing, beyond the insightful online content that I otherwise wouldn’t have been exposed to, I got through two books written by people I know, that I had been wanting to read for a while, but didn’t get around to it because of the time I wasted on social media. One, Midway, written by musician Brent Mason of Belleisle Creek, is a wonderfully written semi-fictional account of life on the carney circuit. The other, A Stroke of Luck, is the very non-fiction account of the rare strokes and even rarer recovery experienced by Bruce Hughes, a book that takes readers on the remarkable recovery journey of this Fredericton educator and musician doctors dubbed The Miracle Man.

Neither of these books would have been read on that trip if I’d spent those hours scrolling. That time had always been there — I just hadn’t been using it well.

On reflection, I’m glad I did this little experiment. But I shall not continue it. I found I missed the partisan memes, the local content, but most of all the social interactions. I missed weighting in with a comment, or giving a “like” to something that resonated, or sharing a post I found especially share-worthy.

My takeaway – I will make a concerted effort to find more balance, and waste less time on social media dead ends. That’s in theory anyway.

Before signing off I want to go back to the start of this essay, and revisit those apprehensions I had about this bus trip. I have been wrong about things before, for example the wisdom of being a Leafs fan since the 60s. But I can’t think of an example of being as wrong about anything as I was about the bus tour. Aside from the stimulating and entertaining content I afforded myself as mentioned above, our fellow travellers, from across the Maritimes, turned out to be such great and interesting people. Chatting through the many meals and evenings, and forming new friendships made it a wonderful experience. It was stress free and there was no boredom at all. I think back to my first response when Janet suggested this trip. I said – “I don’t want to go on a long bus ride with a bunch of old people.” She reminded me that “we are old people”. OK, she may have a point there. But I proved two things – I’m not too old to learn, and not too old to admit when I was wrong.

And Bocelli really was magnificent.

Postscript: Bruce Hughes is lined up to be the guest speaker at the next meeting of the Fredericton Probus group (January 6th)

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Give up? Let me give you a hint. In order those numbers represent how many, how often, and how many again.

Still not sure? I know, I know – the headline gave it away, but I’ll pretend you didn’t notice that.

The numbers are all important ones to Fredericton Meals on Wheels.

100,000 is the number of meals the organization delivered last year.

365 is the number of days per year those deliveries are made.

And 300 is the number of volunteer drivers it takes to get it done.

But those are just numbers. The real story requires going a little deeper.

Consider that 100,000 number, the people who are served by Meals on Wheels Fredericton. Who are they, really, and why are they Meals on Wheels clients? The answer is that they are all sorts of people – they would include people who perhaps were recently released from hospital and don’t have the strength or mobility to make their own dinner.

That’s a fair number but a far greater percentage are aging people living alone. These are people who want to stay in their own homes as long as possible, and it is Meals on Wheels that make this possible. But it’s even more basic than that in some cases.

Some clients have said the Meals on Wheels delivery is the highlight of their day because it is the only human contact they have. Imagine that: one small conversation, one smile at the door, as the high point for someone’s day. That connection matters. It eases loneliness and isolation.

And it provides a measure of safety. If the door goes unanswered, or yesterday’s meal hasn’t been touched, that driver may be the first to know something is wrong. And he or she will alert the office and trigger a check.

In short, Meals on Wheels is an extremely important community service. And even though all 300 drivers volunteer their time, and full disclosure here, my wife Janet and I are two of them, the program still needs financial support to keep going. There is some government financing, but not enough. The rest comes from corporate donors and individual citizens.

We appreciate that there are a lot of non-profits out there doing good work and they are all deserving of your support. Meals on Wheels request is that you consider us equally worthy. We make a tremendous difference for those who want to live in their own home as long as possible. This makes for a more caring community, and economically, enabling people to live in their own homes saves tax dollars. But that latter point is more of an argument for government support. For the rest of us, it boils down to something as simple as neighbours helping neighbours who are in need.

And here’s another thing about Meals on Wheels Fredericton. With our growing demographic, demand is growing. That 100,000 meals delivered last year is going to be surpassed this year, and most likely surpassed again next year. Meals on Wheels has every intention of meeting that increasing need, but they need our support to do so.

If you’re able, even a small donation or a few hours of volunteer time makes a real and immediate difference. It all adds up. An easy way to help is through their website: www.frederictonmealsonwheels.ca

Thanks for considering this.

My subscribers will realize this isn’t my normal Substack. In fact, this is the first time I have ever published what is essentially a pitch for donations. It seemed like the right thing to do, especially this year because the threat of a postal strike resulted in Fredericton Meals on Wheels not sending out its annual donation letter, and the response from that appeal, which is always generous, is something they absolutely count on. Last year’s mail out campaign brought in over $100,000. Their work is too important to incur whatever the hit of no mail campaign this year could be. So, this is my modest attempt to help make up some of that difference. All that said, I will get back to writing about politics and social issues and, who knows – birds, whatever, in due course.

That’s it for now. Please consider sharing this to your networks. Thanks

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It started off innocently enough – a bird feeder attached to the clothesline poll off the deck. I could sit back and watch them come and go. It was relaxing. It was fun. It was August. Then I added a hummingbird feeder because those tiny things flapping away at a hundred miles an hour are mesmerizing. Apparently, birds and feeders and such are something old retired guys get into, so I guess I am just doing my part to uphold the stereotype.

But somehow, word got out to other parts of the animal kingdom that there’s this place on William Street that’s an easy mark for any hungry critter looking to score some free food.

Squirrels were first, but hardly the only ones. Janet was out sitting on the deck reading, oblivious to the pilfering going on just mere feet away. I saw him when I walked out to join her. I whispered she might want to check out the feeder, and I pointed with my left hand as I quietly reached into my pocket with my other arm for my phone so I could take a picture.

This is what she looked up at – this guy wearing his pilfering mask and grabbing at the birdfeed with his little tiny pilfering hands. Not what you might call a discriminating palate either, but hey, the price was right.

So I shooed him away and that was that. He never came back.

The squirrels, though, proved more persistent. They don’t even bother running out of sight when chased away. They retreat a few feet into the lilac tree — close enough to gloat — and wait until I’m back inside.

But I like to think that on most days I’m smarter than the average bear—or squirrel. (With apologies to Yogi. Under 40? Ask your parents.) So on my next trip to the Co-op farm supply store, I splurged on squirrel-proof birdseed. The clerk assured me it wouldn’t harm them—that it just had cayenne pepper mixed in. “Birds can’t taste it because they don’t have taste buds,” she said. “Squirrels hate it.”

Perfect. I don’t know if any squirrels saw the smug expression on my face as I arrived home that day. I was feeling victorious. This would show them who’s boss.

I never see the squirrels when I am loading the feeder, but I just knew they were somewhere close, watching, anticipating. They know the drill, let me fill it, and then when the patio door closes and I’m inside, the sound of that door, to them, is the dinner bell. Time for lunch. But I’m thinking to myself – ha – the jokes going to be on them because this dinner isn’t like the others – this dinner is going to make them run away.

I could almost picture the look of disgust when they took that first spicy bite. And then I’d watch them scurry off, knowing in their little squirrel hearts that they had met their match; that I had outsmarted them. “Go find a new sucker who will feed you, ya mangy rodents. Might as well wipe this address off your miserable squirrel itinerary.” Yeah, a smug feeling indeed.

Until it wasn’t. Imagine, if you will, how fast that smug smile left my face when, not ten minutes after I filled the feeder I looked out and here was Mr. Squirrel back at it, sitting up like a puppy looking for a treat, happily chomping away at this squirrel proof bird feed that was not living up to its stated promise.

I haven’t given up — but I may be losing the war. And now that our hanging out on the back deck has been curtailed for the winter, the majority of my bird focus has moved to the front lawn. It’s still a battle but this one involves creatures with much bigger brains: the crows. More on that next time.

Thanks for reading. I know it’s a departure from my usual Substack fare of politics and social commentary. I will still do that. But I want to expand my subject matter a bit. Hope you like it. And if you do, please consider sharing it. And subscribing.

This is an essay I drafted for Remembrance Day in 2014. More than a decade later, some lines in this still give me a chill. Not my writing, I hasten to add, but the writing of others who are quoted. So, I am republishing it today.

Like many Canadians, my thoughts this day go to our veterans, especially, of course, those of family. While my father was one of the many who went overseas, it is the service of my uncle Johnny that always caught my imagination most.

He was on the front lines as part of the Cape Breton Highlanders when the Germans first used mustard gas. I remember the stories, never told by him but by other relatives, about how he and the others had to piss in their handkerchiefs and put them over their faces so they could breathe and survive. A desperate act by men, many mere teenagers who, by courage and circumstance, found themselves in a situation light years from the quiet lives they left behind, and of which only some would return.

Maybe it is partly because of this but more I think because she is such a damned good writer, that I got goosebumps reading the story in today’s Fredericton Daily Gleaner by Jackie Webster. I have long admired Jackie’s writing, and her account today, telling the story of the Red Chevrons, is simply wonderful.

She wrote of the bond shared by the soldiers from New Brunswick who were part of the Red Chevrons, the first contingent of Canadian troops to go overseas, and of the New Brunswickers who fought in D-Day. And how they would get together each year to share a glass, and remember. And about their ranks, each year more diminished by age, until, as she ended the piece, “and now there are none”.

Before that last line there is exceptional writing, taking readers to those battlefields. Read this:

“When they gathered around the piano, belting out, in voices thinned by time, the war songs of their youth, they had much to be proud of. Gassed at Ypres, bloodied on the Somme, they have taken Vimy Ridge. They did not speak much of fallen friends. They spoke instead of the conditions in which they fought. The heat. The cold. The hunger. The lice. The mud. Most of all the stinking, all-pervasive mud. And the sounds of exploding shells that made them think of hell. But out of that chaos, they forged a bond that made them, all of their lives, closer than brothers.”

But what really got me was Jackie’s use of a quote borrowed from those who were there at that first gas attack. “When hell had opened up its gates, when everybody broke and ran; with chaos the only constant, the Canadians stayed. We stayed and, by God, we held the line.”

How can any Canadian read that, and not be overcome with a sense of pride and wonder, especially when reflecting on the fact that many of these guys were barely out of their teens?

Jackie’s story captures that, and so much more, chronicling how that bond forged in that hell kept these boys together over the intervening years, until the years did what years do. Her story is such a fitting end to a remarkable group.

As I mentioned in the introduction, this is a blog I first published in 2014. Jackie Webster would pass five years later, in 2019, at the age of 97.

In a media interview he not only said he won’t be running again, no surprise there, but at the same time he reminded many of us why he’d be a poor choice if he did. More on what he said in a minute.

Meantime, it was just over a week ago that Higgs former cabinet minister Daniel Allain became the first candidate to throw his hat in the ring to become the new Tory leader. Allain, you may remember was in Higgs’ cabinet, until he dumped him for opposing changes to Policy 713.

Ah yes, Policy 713 – remember that? Blaine Higgs sure does. His stance on it — which many saw as anti-trans — led half a dozen of his MLAs to side with the Liberals and vote against it. The policy would have required teachers to ignore students’ wishes and only use their chosen names or pronouns with parental permission.

In his weekend interview, Higgs reportedly said that those who voted against the changes he wanted weren’t real Conservatives, and should join the party they believe in. Now think about that for a minute. In Higgs’ mind they aren’t really Conservatives because they disagreed with him on Policy 713. People all over the province, of all political stripes and of no stripes at all disagreed with Higgs on that policy. I’d wager the Conservatives who broke ranks with him on this did so on moral and compassionate grounds, unwilling to be part of further victimizing an already marginalized group. To suggest they aren’t real Conservatives because they refused to fall in line with his far-right ideology is, frankly, absurd.

The curious thing is that in that same interview, Higgs said the party has to decide what its values and identity are. Fair enough, that’s important, but I would hope their values and identity don’t include further victimizing trans kids, because that wouldn’t be much of a value.

But that issue could very well return as the party decides what it stands for.

That choice is still a year away and in politics a year is just north of forever. But Daniel Allain was one of those disgruntled Tories who chose principle over party and broke with Higgs over this issue.

Allain describes himself as fiscally conservative and socially progressive. Nothing special about that – just about every politician I know makes that claim, but in Allain’s case, his track record backs it up.

What’s interesting, to the political nerds among us anyway, is that so far the only other Tory who says he may run is Kris Austin, a Higgs loyalist and former Public Safety Minister. He stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Higgs on Policy 713, a clear signal of the ideological divide that could define this race.

So if it were a contest between those two, that is a very definitive line that would go a long way in determining what kind of party the Progressive Conservatives want to be. And depending on how big an issue it becomes, that could make uniting the party an extremely difficult chore for whoever inherits it.

But again, it’s a whole year away, and a lot could happen between now and then. For now, the real question is whether the Progressive Conservatives can rediscover the broader appeal they once had, especially in the francophone north, before Higgs remade the party in his image.

That’s internally. Externally of course, the party’s fortunes will hinge very much on what kind of a first term Susan Holt has. But that’s a conversation for another day.

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Back when I was a kid, I had absolutely no idea about Residential Schools. It’s not something that was ever talked about, let alone taught in history class.

So here I am now, on our National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, reflecting on where we are as a nation, in respect to our indigenous populations. It’s a decade since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued its 94 calls to action. To date, according to the CBC, only 15 of them have been enacted, 17 haven’t yet been touched, and the others are somewhere in the middle of making good progress or little progress. Related, the CBC has launched what it is calling Beyond 94, a very comprehensive and detailed website that tracks the status of each of these calls to action. https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/beyond-94/

Beyond the numbers though, what resonates with me is the attitude of non-indigenous Canadians to Truth and Reconciliation. The vast majority of us, I like to think, were horrified as the revelations of the Residential Schools entered our consciousness with the stories of children being taken from their families, of the abuse and cruelty that went on and of the unmarked graves.

No question it remains as one of the most shameful points in Canadian history. And its effects on many indigenous people continued on for generations. As Sitansisk First Nation (St. Mary’s) councillor Shannon Polches posted in an excellent and moving essay on Facebook this morning, her generation is only now beginning to break the cycles that the residential school system created in indigenous families.

Not being indigenous, I can’t talk from personal experience, but I can see what she’s talking about. As might be expected, progress never comes as quick as we would hope, and progress on the 94 calls to action is an example of that, but I see progress otherwise.

First, the progress on the recommendations are important and are having a positive effect. I also see concrete action in other areas, from the New Brunswick government’s announcement the other day on tax sharing, to other examples in other provinces, but even more than that I see indigenous communities becoming more of a partner in economic development, and more indigenous people than ever are going to university to get educated and are taking their place as educators and entrepreneurs, and as elected officials in provincial and the federal government.

I see a growing emphasis on preserving culture, and not just preserving it but sharing it to an appreciative white population, whether it is the Indigenous People’s Day celebrations at Officer’s Square in Fredericton or in the high schools. Even tonight, where the indigenous band Hello Crows will be preforming to a sold out Fredericton Playhouse. These, and many more examples, I like to think instills a cultural pride in young Indigenous people that will serve them well as they move into adulthood.

I don’t know whether the land acknowledgements that we hear from stages or read on websites amount to much, but when I hear the applause, for example when the land acknowledgement is read at the Playhouse as it is before every show, I think that reaction of the crowd clapping in support means something.

Of course more needs to be done, but now schools are teaching about Residential Schools and their effect, and that serves to change attitudes, which paves the way for more progress. In short, I like to think we are getting to where we need to be.

I see Canada on the right track. For contrast, consider the plight of indigenous people in the United States.

There, while they have the right to vote, the Trump government has enacted voter suppression measures that make it extremely difficult. The government requires proof of residency, even though the government fully knows that some 40,000 or so American indigenous people live in homes that don’t have addresses on them. As well, the government has restricted the number of voting places on native reserves, which means that in some cases it would require driving up to 50 miles to get to one. That’s a 100-mile return trip and poverty is such that many cann’t afford the gas for that.

The biggest example of American government indifference or even distain for its indigenous population, came just last week when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the 20 men who were awarded the Medal of Honour for what is know as the Wounded Knee massacre of 1890 would keep their medals. This has been a controversial issue in the United States for years. Historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote about this decision recently, and her essay outlines how this was a massacre of 230 peaceful Lakotas, mainly women and children, massacred within a few hours. There was absolutely nothing the least little bit heroic in what these soldiers did, and by choosing to ignore the facts and still consider these soldiers worthy of such an honour is a slap in the face of both American indigenous people and of soldiers who deservedly were honoured with that medal for truly heroic action. Richardson’s piece on what happened that day at Wounded Knee is well worth a listen. A link to it can be found below

So there we have it. Both countries have reason to be ashamed of their respective histories of treatment of indigenous people. But only one seems to be rising to the challenge of responsibly dealing with it.

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And I remember thinking to myself “right on” whenever Mark Carney used that Elbows Up phrase in his election campaign, convincing us he wasn’t going to be taking any shit from Trump. Oh, those were heady days, weren’t they?

As we know, Carney snatched victory from the jaws of defeat with that phrase, convincing us he was the guy best positioned to take on Trump.

So how’s it going? First, Carney cancelled the digital tax on uber-rich American tech companies like Google and Meta because Trump said if didn’t scrap it he wasn’t going to negotiate any trade deals. That tax would have brought in $7 Billion over five years. Scrapping it amounted to shoving $7 Billion dollars to Trump’s side of the poker table, just so he’d keep playing. I don’t know about you, but that struck me as kind of the opposite of elbows up.

Then, last week, Carney cancelled our retaliatory tariffs. It strikes me that that was done with elbows pinned as close to his sides as they could possibly be. Carney rationalized it by saying it was in the interests of keeping what he says is the best trade deal any country has with the U.S. intact, and setting the table for the much bigger issue of the renegotiation of CUSMA, which covers the vast, vast majority of goods we trade with the US. In short, what the retaliatory tariffs covered was peanuts compared to the impact of goods covered by CUSMA, which is up for renewal next year.

So the rationale does make sense, but I’m torn. The emotional side of my brain is saying “give that bastard nothing” Elbows Up all the way baby! But the rational side realizes Carney has to play the long game here. While Trump may think he holds all the cards, Carney’s the one holding millions of Canadian jobs in the balance.

That’s not to say I like it, just that I get it. But I still wonder about it.

The conventional wisdom is you don’t give a bully anything because he’ll never be satisfied, he’ll just try to take more. And Trump isn’t just a bully, he’s also an idiot. And that’s not a value judgement on my part. He’s the one who said CUSMA is a terrible deal that only an idiot would agree to. He’s the guy who signed it, in his first term. That’s who Carney, Dominic LeBlanc and the rest of the team have to deal with.

So I’m giving Carney the benefit of the doubt. He’s a lot smarter than I am and like other leaders, he has to do things that wouldn’t be required if they were dealing with a rational person. Think of Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. At the press briefing part of their recent summit meeting, he thanked Trump a dozen times in under five minutes — not because he wanted to, but because he had to. Other European allies felt they had to heap on excessive flattery as well. That’s the reality of negotiating with this man.

My hope is that Canadians, who came together in solidarity over Trump’s threats like nothing I have ever seen before, remain united in the face of this threat and don’t divide because they think Carney has capitulated. Pierre Poilievre, just off winning his byelection has already made that assertion. That’s unfortunate as you would hope he would understand the strategy and support it, rather than try to score cheap political points by trying to lessen Canadian support for the government on this issue. But that said, I expect he’s repeating what many Canadians may be thinking.

As someone who has worked in political strategy, I’d say he would be doing himself and his party a favour by being supportive of the government on this. Be part of the unity Canadians have found in this situation.

With Trump being unpredictable, who knows where this is going to go. While my instinct would have been to give him nothing, it’s just as well I’m not in charge and that people who understand the game and the players better are the ones making the decisions. I admit I would have applauded if we had cut off, let’s say potash sales to the US, as that would have hurt them badly and would have brought great pressure to bear on Trump. But it would have hurt us too. As would cutting off their electricity, but notice Doug Ford isn’t advocating for that any more. He gets it.

Related, and I can understand that some of this should be done quietly and without much fanfare, but I hope Carney and his team are working like hell behind the scenes to find us new trading partners, so we become less dependent on the US for our economic stability. I trust that is happening as aggressively as appropriate.

But for now, at least by cancelling the retaliatory tariffs Carney has opened the door for negotiations. Of course you can’t trust Trump as far as you can throw him, and while it can be interpreted as a good will gesture, giving in to a bully usually doesn’t end well. But given the situation, the alternative was worse. This has to be better than Trump just deciding out of the blue what tariffs will be on all those goods covered by CUSMA.

Canadians came together a few short months ago in defiance of Trump. We can’t afford to let that unity fracture now, despite what some see as capitulation. While on the surface it may look like that, it’s far too early in the game to make that determination.

As for me, I’ll keep wearing my Elbows Up cap, keep checking my Buy Beaver app to ensure I’m not supporting the American economy, and I’ll keep boycotting the border. Because while elbows may have to dip a little in Ottawa —out here, mine don’t have to, so they are still up.

People struggling with addiction, mental illness, and homelessness often rely on resources like shelters and communal kitchens—I've seen it firsthand in our community. Many are barely holding on. And yet, government support remains woefully inadequate.

So when private citizens step in to help — with real investment, professional care, and hope — it’s deeply frustrating to see bureaucratic fear shut them down. That’s exactly what happened on Darlings Island

Adam Beman, co-founder of Hidden Secret Recovery Centre, in front of facility that cannot open (Photo Credit: CBC)

The Centre That Never Got a Chance

Adam and Michael Beman invested $1.3-million in Hidden Secret Recovery Centre, zoned correctly and staffed professionally — just days from opening. But six neighbours, represented by five lawyers, raised complaints about safety, property values, and "unpredictable" behaviour. The tribunal sided with them and revoked the permit.

Fear was enough to stop a facility that would have served just six to eight pre-screened, voluntary clients in a quiet residential setting.

What the “Research” Actually Says

Neighbours cited studies to back their fears — but the evidence tells a different story.

Take the oft-misused study “Addiction Treatment Centers and Neighborhood Crime” (Bondurant, Lindo & Swensen, 2019), which found that any uptick in crime was confined to property crimes against the centre itself, not neighbourhood crime.

Other research the neighbours claimed as evidence was by the Lincoln Institute. But this was a study that examined assisted housing and poverty, not addiction treatment facilities at all — yet it was treated by the tribunal as though it proved harm from rehab centres. This manipulation of data is fear dressed as research.

Neighbours Changed Their Minds — with Experience

When communities actually host supportive or recovery housing, their attitudes often shift. Consider a Canadian study on supportive housing:

“There were never any issues. It went very smoothly … we’ve never had any complaints … they’re good neighbours.”
— School administrator living near a supportive residence Reddit1Library+1Wikipedia+1

Other cases show neighbours transforming from NIMBY to YIMBY when engaged and informed:

“Residents move from opposition to support after communication … and expert knowledge is provided.” MDPI

Even in a study of group homes for people with intellectual disabilities, neighbours reported being “generally positive” after getting to know residents ResearchGate.

These examples show that personal interaction and transparency often dissolve stigma more than any tribunal could.

Does a Rehab Centre Attract Crime?

Yes — petty theft of medication has occurred in some cases, but that’s a security/load management issue, not evidence of neighbourhood risk.

Multiple studies confirm that crime doesn’t increase after treatment or supportive facilities open — in many cases, community-level crime drops as addiction gets treated.

Stigma Masquerading as Planning

Hidden Secret wasn’t to be a drop-in, wasn’t to be chaotic—it was modest, professional, and planned. Yet six neighbours and five lawyers managed to shut it down before it could open, in a province that has just 34 publicly funded treatment beds, 800,000 residents, and 30,000 annual referrals.

People are waiting months — sometimes more than six — for help. Some die waiting. And when someone offers to help, fear triumphs?

The Bigger Question

The Bemans say they’re exploring legal options. I hope they fight. But this isn’t just a zoning battle — it’s a test of our values.

Do we want to live in places where fear and stigma deter healing? Or in communities where compassion and engagement let people step up and make a difference?

Because until rehab is welcome next door, addiction remains our neighbour’s — and our — problem.

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But why do they call it Bard in the Barracks? I get that it’s good alliteration with the B’s, but they’re in a park not a barracks. But perhaps I doth protest too much. See what I did there? Working in a bastardization of a line from Shakespeare? Clever, no? No, well, it wasn’t the main point anyway.

My point is this: Shakespeare in the park is a terrific, creative use of public space, and it gives tourists and locals alike a window into our city’s cultural side. But it also got me thinking. What if we took this idea of interactive, street theatre and gave it a local literary twist?

Enter: The Fredericton Literary Pub Crawl

Picture this: a guided evening tour through downtown Fredericton, stopping at various pubs, with actors performing short scenes, stories, and anecdotes tied to local authors and our rich literary history. You could even package it: “Come for the Shakespeare, stay for the pub crawl.”

The idea's been bouncing around in my head ever since last fall when I was lucky enough to find myself in Dublin. Then doubly lucky to find myself part of the Dublin Literary Pup Crawl. (Shout out here to Brent Mason as we were there as part of his annual Sights and Sounds of Ireland group tour.) The Dublin Literary Pub Crawl—two actors, in character, guiding a group from one historic pub to another, stopping to share stories about Irish literary legends like Samuel Beckett, Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, and Oscar Wilde. Amazing stories. And the audience was invited to join in, so when the stories started about Oscar Wilde, I piped up with my tidbit about Wilde’s Canadian connection.

I should stop here and explain something. What I know about famous Irish literary figures would be on par with your dog’s knowledge of algebra. But I have friends who know stuff. One of them, Lane MacIntosh, not only knows literature, he’ll recite passages, word for word. I realize I’m digressing again. But my point is that years ago, over a Jamieson’s fittingly, Lane told me the story of the time Oscar Wilde came to Fredericton. It was in 1882. It was the first Maritimes stop of Wilde’s North American speaking tour.

And you’ll never guess what the subject of his lecture was? No, I mean it - you’ll never guess? Give Up? Wallpaper. Yeah, wallpaper. Didn’t see that coming, did ‘ya?

Why wallpaper, you ask? Well, it seems this new invention of wallpaper had, for some crazy reason, become the latest obsession of Europe’s upper crust. Wilde, noted not just for his literary flare and his flamboyance, but also for his passion for decorating, was doing a North American tour to talk about it.

Not sure I’d cross the street for a lecture on wallpaper, but his speech at Fredericton City Hall that evening nearly 150 years ago, drew 800 people. That’s not counting the 25 UNB students who disrupted the event, mocking him. Apparently, Wilde, an Oxford-educated aesthete in a velvet coat and silk stockings, represented something completely foreign to Fredericton's buttoned-down, colonial university culture of the time.

Anyway, I threw that Oscar Wilde – Canadian connection into the conversation when the moment seemed right. The actors were surprised at hearing that Wilde had ever come to Canada. I wonder if they later worked that Canadian connection into their stories? Be cool if they did. But the real question is why don’t we tell our own literary stories?

We’ve Got the Bars. We’ve Got the Writers. We’ve got the actors. Let’s Go.

Fredericton is perfect for a literary pub crawl. We’ve got a number of great downtown pubs within walking distance. One of them is literally called The James Joyce. Imagine an actor in late 1800’s garb, standing outside, pointing across and down the street to where the Barker House Hotel once stood—where Oscar Wilde stayed—and launching into the story of his visit and the curious wallpaper lecture.

Then down to O’Hickey’s Irish Pub, over to Dolan’s or Wilser’s Room at the Tannery, and up to The Lunar Rogue—each stop paired with a story, a performance, and maybe a pint.

While the pub crawl would focus on stories about our literary giants, it would be appropriate to make an exception at the Rogue, where rather than telling a story of a literary figure, an actor or actors could focus on that pub’s namesake, Henry Moore Smith, who became known as the Lunar Rogue for his notorious activity as a conman, horse thief and escape artist when he roamed New Brunswick back in the early 1800s. It’s still New Brunswick content. and those stories would be such a good fit.

So we have the bars. We also have the storytellers. I remember years ago when Paddy Gregg and Armand Paul, both of CBC fame, in full costume re-enacted New Brunswick’s last duel. Or when our former company, Bissett Matheson Communications, was hired to organize and host a group of travel writers on what is called a Fam Tour. “Fam” is short for familiarization, the objective being to expose these writers to experiences that they would hopefully write positively about, and therefore help attract tourists to the area. As part of the activities, we had them on a bus to somewhere, can’t remember where but it might have been Kings Landing. The bus stopped on the highway to pick up what appeared to be someone who was stranded, someone clad in a New Brunswick tuxedo – red flannel shirt, etc. So the bus stops and this guy climbs on, looking bewildered at first, then within minutes he’s regaling this bus full of travel writers with tales of the Dungarvon Whooper and the Coleman frog. That “stranded guy” was Peter Pacey. Then there is the Calithumpians Tour & Theatre Company that he founded decades ago and is still entertaining tourists and locals, these days with a lantern-lit ghost walk.

My point is that we have a tradition for this live street theatre, and a new generation of talented people who carry it on. Street theatre is already a part of Fredericton’s DNA.

Local Legends Deserve the Spotlight

This wouldn’t be a copy of Dublin’s tour. It would be our own version, with our own voices.

Writers like Charles G.D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, Alden Nowlan, Herb Curtis, David Adams Richards—all with strong ties to Fredericton. And that’s just scratching the surface. Each one has stories worth sharing. What an interesting walk it could be. And yes, we’d still stop for drinks—even if just for “literary lubrication.”

For what it’s worth, that’s my idea. Pretty good complement to the Shakespeare and ghost walks, don’t you think? And we don’t even need to come up with a name – Fredericton Literary Pub Crawl works just great. We have local writers who can research and write the content, there are producers who can design the tour, and actors who can tell or re-enact the stories.

We have an excellent tourism department in this city. They are always working to make improvements, like the Thursday Night Market and the changes at Kilarney Lake. So if they embraced this idea, or if some entrepreneur who understands this can not only be an addition to tourism but also a revenue stream, this could happen. Need incentive - The Sunday Times named the Dublin Literary Pub Crawl 2nd in it’s list of the 50 Best Walks in the world. Not to oversell it or anything, I’m telling ya, this has potential. Anyway, it’s a thought.

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