Min Smale is the chairwoman of the Privateer Days organizing committee. This year’s event is scheduled for June 28 and 29 in Liverpool. (Rick Conrad)

The organizers of this year’s Privateer Days festival in Liverpool are promising a bigger and better celebration even as they cope with less funding and fewer volunteers.

Entering its 39th year, Privateer Days has become the biggest event of the year in Liverpool, drawing thousands to the downtown. 

Min Smale, who chairs the Privateer Days committee, says that because of the funding challenges, organizers decided this year to turn the traditionally three-day event into a two-day affair on June 28 and 29.

“I think this year is actually going to be even better than last year and we’re working with a third of the money,” she said in an interview.

“We’d rather condense the days down and go big than spread it over three and not be able to do as much, so it’s go big or go home. … Just trying to make it still historical, but family oriented and community supported.”

Privateer Days is a mix of the modern and historical, as it marks Liverpool’s history of privateering dating back to 1775. Privateers were private citizens sanctioned by the Crown to attack enemy ships and confiscate their property. The spoils were shared between the conquering crews and the Crown. Privateers were not pirates, and they were highly respected in the community.

Privateer Days features a parade through town, entertainment, craft vendors and food trucks on the waterfront, an historic encampment re-enactment in Fort Point Lighthouse Park, and a traditional colonial wedding.

Privateer Days features historical re-enactments, live entertainment, carnival rides and much more. (Chris LaRocque Photography via Privateer Days)

This year will also have carnival rides for kids and carnival games, inflatable entertainment from Yarmouth Big Bounce Rentals and a street dance on Friday night on Henry Hensey Drive near the waterfront, sponsored by Mersey Seafoods.

This is Smale’s third year on the organizing committee. She says it’s been a struggle since Covid to find people to help with the event. 

And board turnover has also affected their ability to look for funding. But she says the new board members are excited for this year’s event and committed to working on Privateer Days into the future.

“Over these last years, the turnout has increased. We’re looking forward to having the encampment back and doing the colonial wedding again and just trying to see with fresh faces, fresh minds, fresh ideas what new things we can bring to the table to make this year different and stand apart.”

She says that Privateer Days isn’t alone in struggling to find volunteers.

“In talking with other not-for-profit and charitable organization in south Queens, it’s not just Privateer Days that’s having issues with finding volunteers. It’s everybody. You kind of find the same people showing up in multiple boards. And we’re all just trying to do what we can.”

Smale said they’re also trying to engage more local businesses and encourage the thousands who attend Privateer Days to visit more businesses on Liverpool’s Main Street.

“Making sure that we’re adequately supporting those businesses and making sure that once the traffic in the park has died down for the day that we’re diverting them into the community so that we’re working hand in hand in supporting Liverpool thrive.”

The organizing committee is teaming up with Rafflebox and with local businesses for various fundraisers leading up to Privateer Days. Hell Bay Brewing is holding one on Saturday night featuring local musicians. They’ll be holding a 50/50 draw and donating $1 from each beer toward Privateer Days.

Smale says she’s learned a lot over the past three years about how important Privateer Days is to the community.

“In terms of South Shore events, people look forward to the Big Ex, people look forward to Privateer Days. It’s the end of the summer, it’s the end of the school year, it’s that kind of pivotal point of the start of summer in Liverpool.”

For more information or if you’re interested in volunteering with Privateer Days, check out their Facebook page.

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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Debris from the fish farm near Coffin Island on Beach Meadows Beach in 2021. (Rick Conrad photo)

It’s been a little over a month since Nova Scotia’s aquaculture review board indefinitely adjourned hearings into a fish farm application in Liverpool Bay.

And there’s still no indication if the hearings will ever begin.

Jamie Simpson with Juniper Law represents one of the intervenors in the hearing, a group of lobster fishermen. He said Thursday he hasn’t heard a word.

“The parties haven’t been informed of any updates, any new dates, or any attempts to schedule anything,” Simpson said in an interview.

“It’s just kind of radio silence at the moment. And I guess we’re just kind of sitting tight waiting to see what might happen.”

Kelly Cove Salmon, owned by Cooke Aquaculture, applied in 2019 to expand its salmon farming operation off Coffin Island near Liverpool, and to add two new farms off Brooklyn and Mersey Point. If successful, that would increase Cooke’s operation to 60 pens from 14, and include trout as well as salmon. It could mean up to 1.8 million farmed salmon in the bay, compared to about 400,000 now.

More than 150 residents, businesses and community groups filed written submissions with the board. Five groups were granted intervenor status at the hearings: Protect Liverpool Bay, the Region of Queens, the Brooklyn Marina, 22 Lobster Fishermen of Liverpool Bay, and Kwilmu’kw Maw-Klusuaqn, which is representing the Acadia First Nation.

The hearings had been scheduled to begin in Liverpool on March 4. At a business luncheon in Liverpool on Feb. 7, Premier Tim Houston said he was personally opposed to the expansion, but that he respects the independence of the review board.

On Feb. 20, groups involved in the hearing got a “high priority” email from the board, telling them those hearings were cancelled. Lawyers were told that April hearing dates were still a go.

Then on March 6, the board posted a notice on its website that “all sessions of the hearing have been adjourned until further notice.”

The board did not give a reason. And it’s still just as tight-lipped today as it was then.

In an email on Thursday, board clerk Stacy Bruce repeated what he told QCCR in March, that there is no new information about the hearing. And he said when new information is available, it will be posted to the website.

Bruce also turned down a request from QCCR to interview board chairman Tim Cranston. He said board members are not available for public comment on their work.

The delays occurred when lawyers involved in the hearing were told in mid-February that then-chairwoman Jean McKenna was no longer on the board. 

They were surprised because McKenna had been involved in preparing for the hearings, even though her one-year term was set to expire anyway on Feb. 15. That is confirmed in a ministerial order signed by then-Fisheries and Aquaculture Minister Steve Craig on Feb. 17, 2023.

Part of the ministerial order from Feb. 17, 2023, reappointing Jean McKenna as chairwoman of the Nova Scotia Aquaculture Review Board for one year.

A spokesman for Cooke Aquaculture declined comment Thursday on the delays.

And Kent Smith, Nova Scotia’s fisheries and aquaculture minister, also would not comment Thursday. A spokeswoman said it wouldn’t be appropriate to comment while the matter is still before the board.

Lawyer Jamie Simpson said that regulatory boards generally try to address issues in a timely manner. 

“I would presume that the most affected is Cooke, Kelly Cove Salmon,” Simpson said. “They are the ones that brought the application forward and they are the ones that are interested in getting this moving. In terms of the lobster fishers of Liverpool Bay, they would rather not see the aquaculture site go in of course because of the potential impacts on lobster stocks and impact to fishing in that area.”

Simpson said that his clients will wait and see what happens with the hearings. He said it would be nice to have the issue resolved, but that it’s up to the board to make that happen.

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The emergency department at Queens General Hospital in Liverpool. (Rick Conrad photo)

The emergency department at Queens General Hospital in Liverpool closed on Thursday at 5 a.m. and will reopen on Friday at 8 a.m.

It will close again at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday and reopen Monday at 6 p.m.

The ER at South Shore Regional Hospital in Bridgewater will be open. Nova Scotia Health advises anyone with urgent medical needs to call 911.

Patients of Queens Family Health can access the same-day clinic through the week for new and emerging health problems at 902-354-3322.

Nova Scotia Health gave no reason for the temporary closure of the Liverpool ER, but in the past officials have blamed staffing shortages.

Velta Vikmanis’s art exhibit, Chaos to Calm, is on now at the Astor Theatre in Liverpool. (Rick Conrad)

As many others did during the pandemic, Velta Vikmanis and her husband were looking to move from the crush of the city to the calm of the country.

“With the pandemic I think everybody kind of did an inventory and reprioritizing of life,” the Liverpool resident says. “And so we were very fortunate that we came to Nova Scotia. Neither one of us had ever been here or visited. We drove around for two and a half months and came across the South Shore and fell in love with it.”

That examination of where you’ve been and where you end up is a central theme of Vikmanis’s art exhibit, now on at the Astor Theatre in Liverpool. 

Chaos to Calm has its official opening with a reception on Friday at 6:30 p.m. It runs for the month of May. 

“Coming from Ontario, from a large metropolitan city of 4.2 million people and constant traffic and people on top of each other to this slower, calmer pace. … The show itself is an opportunity for me to do a kind of retrospective.”

Vikmanis and her husband Peter arrived in Liverpool in November 2021, part of the influx of people who moved to Queens County in the midst and the aftermath of the pandemic.

Before that, they lived in Toronto for 16 years, where Vikmanis worked full time. She pursued her bachelor of fine arts degree in sculpture and installation at OCAD University as a part-time student.

“The show is really a reflection of things I did in the past, things that I did in school and an opportunity for me to get back into a daily practice and reflection of my art,” she says.

“I’ve never been what I consider an artist who makes work for a living. I’ve always done it for myself and if it happens to inspire or spark joy in someone else and they appreciate it and want to purchase it, great. That just buys me more art supplies.”

While Liverpool has served as a respite from the bustle of a bigger city, it also allowed her to rediscover her passion for art. After going to school, working full time and living through a pandemic, Vikmanis says she was burnt out after years of what she calls “forced creativity”.

“It was signing up to do this show that actually forced me to do an assessment, an inventory, catalogue, and actually create new works. Because prior to that, I went through a period of no creativity and just putting it on the shelf.”

When artist Velta Vikmanis moved to Liverpool, she was inspired by Queens County’s beaches. (Rick Conrad)

Vikmanis’s show features an eclectic mix of styles, media and topics. From photography in the Azores or on the beaches of Queens County to painting to sculpture, she says it represents 20 years of work.

The centrepiece of the show is Vestige Echo, her thesis project at OCAD. It is a paper-based sculpture that consists of literal pieces and mementoes of Vikmanis’s life, quilted together and hung in the window. A metronome ticks on the windowsill behind it. 

Her parents had been packing up her childhood home in Minneapolis. They started to send her boxes of her old report cards and other keepsakes they collected over the years.

At the beginning of the pandemic, her father died. And that spurred Vikmanis to go through all of the memorabilia from her parents and from her own collection. 

“It was this whole very strange experience of having to mourn and grieve from afar. So that’s when I started gathering and looking through all the things I had collected.”

She tore everything into smaller pieces, ordered them into boxes by the weight of the paper and stitched them together according to how she picked them up out of each box.

It took her 24 weeks to complete the original eight-by-10-foot installation piece. What’s on exhibit at the Astor is a much smaller, but no less compelling, version.

“It was liberating. Certain things, you put them away and you don’t really ever really pull them back out, do you? So the fact that I was deliberate in looking at every single item, reminiscing about it, but the fact that I could have that moment and that time with that person, with that event, with that lived experience but then pass it along. For the Vestige Echo, hopefully (people) find something in it that triggers something in them.”

“It’s fun to experience it with somebody who has no idea who I am and who these people are and someone who’s present to have that shared memory. It triggers something really fun.”

Vikmanis says she loves finding beauty in the mundane. 

“At the end of the day, I’m still drawn to the ordinary. I”m not somebody who’s very gifted in realism. I can’t paint in a realistic manner. I’ve never been interested in that.”

Vikmanis jokes that since she moved to Liverpool, she’s worked almost everywhere. She now works at Main and Mersey on Main Street, and she volunteers with QCCR on its board of directors. She is also the host of two shows on the station. 

She says she’s looking forward to the opening reception on Friday, to hearing what people think of her work and to meeting other artists from Queens County.

“This is my last stop. I’m not going anywhere. Liverpool is my home now. I love all the people here and getting to know everybody. It’s a great opportunity to meet people and engage with the artist community and to meet folks that I haven’t come across yet. For me, it was that, OK I’ve transitioned, I’ve moved, I’m settled in, I’m truly calm now, so now I need to get back into that practice, and this was that kickstart to get back into that practice of thinking about,, OK what am I going to create next?”

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The Port Medway Readers Festival has announced its 2024 lineup.

The Port Medway Readers Festival has announced its lineup of guest authors for their 2024 season.

The annual literary event began in 2002 and allows literature lovers to meet writers in an intimate, friendly setting in the village of Port Medway.

Past festivals have featured Margaret Atwood, Tomson Highway, Jane Urquhart and many other renowned and best-selling writers, poets and playwrights.

This year, the festival will welcome Rosemary Sullivan, author of the memoir Where the World Was, on July 20; Michael Crummey, with his new novel The Adversary, on Aug. 17; Holly Hogan with her non-fiction work, Message in a Bottle: Ocean Dispatches from a Seabird Biologist, on Aug. 18, and Alexander MacLeod, reading from his new book of short stories, Animal Person, on Aug. 31.

Tickets go on sale Mon., May 13 at 6 p.m. You can find more information about the Port Medway Readers Festival on their Facebook page or at portmedwayreadersfestival.com.

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

Barb Hill-Taylor of East Port L’Hebert was at a community wildfire preparedness day on Tuesday, organized by Parks Canada. (Rick Conrad)

When last spring’s wildfires were consuming thousands of hectares around Barrington in southwestern Nova Scotia, Barb Hill-Taylor was about 90 kilometres away at her home in East Port L’Hebert.

“We have only one exit from our peninsula,” she said Tuesday, “and I was concerned about that and also the closeness of the Barrington fire, you could see the plume.”

The fires didn’t get close enough to threaten Hill-Taylor’s house, but they still left a lasting impression. Even though her house is made of concrete with a metal roof, she was still concerned enough that after it was all over, she and her neighbours asked the province’s wildfire prevention officer to visit their area. The officer gave her and her neighbours tips on how to make their properties more wildfire resilient.

“It was great. I learned a lot. We spent about two hours driving around the peninsulas and she would point out things that were issues for people to look at. It was a really worthwhile exercise. The snag is that people have to act on the recommendations now and cut trees. It’s difficult because you spend a lot of time doing your landscaping.”

Hill-Taylor was one of the local residents at Kejimkujik National Park Seaside in Port Joli on Tuesday for a wildfire community preparedness day.

Organized by Parks Canada, Tuesday’s event also included officials from Nova Scotia’s Department of Natural Resources and Renewables and the Liverpool Fire Department.

They were there to educate people on how to make their property a little safer from fires. Parks Canada officials also laid out many of the measures they have taken at the park to help mitigate the spread of wildfires, which mirrored the things people can do on their own properties.

The fires that started in the Barrington Lake area last May eventually burned more than 23,000 hectares. So far this year, Nova Scotia crews have responded to 27 wildfires around the province.

Cory Isenor, a forestry resource technician with the Department of Natural Resources and Renewables, says it’s a lot about common sense.

“It’s looking at the stuff around your home and trying to eliminate anything that could catch fire.”

Isenor advises homeowners to keep grass trimmed and short around your foundations, clean up any brush or leaves from around your home, make sure your decks, patios, gutters and roof are free of leaf and yard waste, and cut back any trees, especially if they’re evergreens, from around your home. He said it’s also important to make sure stacks of firewood are stored as far away from your house as possible.

Officials discussed which building materials are more prone to igniting in case of an outdoor fire. Metal roofing and concrete structures are best. But using non-combustible and fire-rated products can also help.

“The big thing is the distances from the combustible materials around your home,” Isenor said in an interview. “And the biggest thing is what we call the intermediate zone which is touching your house, a couple of metres right around your home, that you may have flower beds or dried wood, fences, anything that could catch and then transfer that over to your home. 

“You want to try to remove any combustible material in that immediate zone: birch bark mulch, firewood piles. Decks are always an area of concern.”

And Isenor said it’s also important, in the event of a wildfire, for people to be ready to shelter in place for 72 hours or to evacuate immediately.

Local resident Nancy Perry said she and her husband already cut back many of the trees on their property after last year’s fires. But she said she came to the event to be better prepared, just in case. 

“I was just interested to find out how we could make some changes at our property to be a little safer if we ever get another fire.”

The wildfire preparedness day was part of FireSmart Canada’s National Wildfire Community Preparedness Day, which was observed on Saturday. Parks Canada officials recommended on Tuesday that people check out the FireSmart Canada website for more tips and a self-assessment of how to protect your home.

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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The front entrance of the Town Hall Arts and Cultural Centre, home of the Astor Theatre, will be closed for the next two weeks. (Rick Conrad)

The front entrance of the Town Hall Arts and Cultural Centre, home of the Astor Theatre, on Main Street in Liverpool will be closed for the next two weeks.

The Region of Queens is doing some work on the front facade of the building.

The accessible entrance at the rear of the building will be open.

The work was expected to begin on Monday.

Emergency crews clean up the scene of a two-vehicle collision near Tim Hortons in Liverpool on Friday morning. (Rick Conrad)

Emergency crews responded to two separate collisions in Liverpool on Friday.

The first occurred near the Tim Hortons shortly after 10 a.m. A Subaru Forrester and Hyundai Elantra collided as one was exiting onto Bristol Avenue and the other car was turning at the intersection.

An RCMP spokesman said nobody was injured, but both cars were towed.

The second one happened at about 11:45 a.m. at Henry Hensey Drive and Bristol Avenue. RCMP, EHS and Liverpool fire crews were on scene. Three vehicles were involved in that incident. Nobody was injured, RCMP said.

A spokeswoman said it appeared one car ran into another car, which then bumped another vehicle.

It snarled traffic for about an hour. 

Traffic was snarled around lunch time on Friday on Bristol Avenue after three cars were involved in a collision at Henry Hensey Drive. (Rick Conrad)

Officials are holding a wildfire preparedness event at Keji Seaside in Port Joli on Monday. (Parks Canada)

Parks Canada is holding a community wildfire preparedness session on Tuesday, May 7, at Kejimkujik Seaside Adjunct in Port Joli.

The event goes from 3 to 5 p.m. Officials from the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources and Renewables and the Liverpool Firefighters’ Association will be on hand to give advice on how to make communities more resilient to wildfires.

Parks Canada will also be giving a tour of the recent fire prevention work at Keji Seaside.

It’s part of National Wildfire Community Preparedness Day which is observed on the first Saturday in May. That’s a project of FireSmart Canada, which educates people on how to boost resilience to wildfires. 

Crews in Nova Scotia have already responded to 27 wildfires so far this year. Last May, a blaze that broke out in the Barrington Lake area eventually consumed more than 23,433 hectares.

It’s an outdoor event. It was originally scheduled for Monday. Updates will be posted on the Keji Facebook page.

John Simmonds, chairman of the Astor Theatre Society, addresses a members’ meeting on Thursday at the Liverpool theatre. (Rick Conrad)

The board of the Astor Theatre Society on Thursday clarified who can vote and who can be nominated to its board at its upcoming general meeting.

Some members who signed up in the past two months were concerned that the Astor would not allow them to vote. 

About 50 people turned out for the members meeting on Thursday evening at the theatre. Board chairman John Simmonds explained that all members in good standing will be able to vote at its upcoming annual general meeting.

“There’s been controversy over conflicting bylaws and conflicting interpretations and we’ve tried to remain as quiet as we could on those issues. But it was necessary to do a lot of research to make sure we were on good ground in what we were proposing. Every member who is in good standing who is over 18 years of age and a resident of Nova Scotia can vote at the AGM.”

The meeting was held in response to a request from the ad hoc group Queens County Community Theatre Advocates. That group was formed after the resignation of associate artistic director Ashley-Rose Goodwin in March.

The group said it was concerned about recent decisions made by executive director Jerri Southcott and the Astor Board. The group said that as Astor members they wanted  to hold the board accountable.

In an April 25 update to the group’s members, one of the founding members of the group Kevin Colwell wrote that the Astor appeared to be taking a “restrictive” approach to voting at the upcoming AGM. He said that in discussions with the Astor, it appeared they were planning to prevent anyone who became a member after Dec. 31, 2023 from voting.

He called on group members to attend the May 2 members meeting and the May 9 AGM.  

About 50 people were at the Astor Theatre in Liverpool on Thursday evening for a meeting on voting at the upcoming annual general meeting. (Rick Conrad)

The issue over voting arose because of confusion about which set of bylaws was valid.

Simmonds said Thursday that until the board did a “deep dive” into their archives, even they were unsure of the proper voting procedures. So they hired Marjorie Hickey, a lawyer with McInnes Cooper in Halifax, to look into it and give an opinion.

“It outlines in great detail exactly what all the steps were, how the three sets of bylaws compare and contrast, where we stand legally now. And she has confirmed through case law and others that we are in good position now using the 2017 bylaws.”

As a result of that legal advice, the Astor has also changed the date of the May 9 AGM to June 24.

According to its most recent bylaws, the Astor will appoint people to replace three directors who resigned in the past couple of months.

There will be four open spots on the board of directors at the June AGM. Any member can be nominated to sit on the board.

“So hopefully this will set the record straight on where we stand and where we propose going with all of this,” Simmonds said. “It will be a true democratic process at the AGM in terms of nominations. We look forward to having many of you putting your name forward.”

Some members of the Queens County Community Theatre Advocates were at the meeting. But they didn’t want to comment until they could read the lawyer’s report to the Astor.

Simmonds said after the meeting that he believes it addressed many concerns from community members. He said the board believes it’s on solid legal ground.

“We’re very comfortable that we’re in good shape now with our current bylaws. And that allows us to move forward and alleviates a lot of the issues and controversy brought to us by the community,” he said in an interview. 

“It clarified things that we didn’t know ourselves. So it was new to us. So once we digested it all ourselves and came up with a final conclusion verified by the lawyer, … all the rest of what went on in the past is not really relevant now.”

Simmonds said the Astor will announce the new appointed members of the board in the next week. He said it will also send notice about the June 24 annual general meeting to all members and advertise it in local newspapers and online.

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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