HUNTS POINT – A large crowd was on hand on Thursday, February 26th at White Point Beach Resort for the announcement of the Mersey River Wind Project, which will see construction and installation of 33 wind turbines with related grid connection infrastructure. The wind farm is expected to supply 148.5 MW of zero-emission electricity, capable of powering more than 50,000 homes.

The Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB) is providing a $206 million loan to a partnership between Slate Asset Management and funds managed by Hamilton Lane to develop a wind farm at Mersey River. Project partner Renewall Energy Inc. will sell electricity to end customers in Nova Scotia.

The announcement was made by the Honourable Gregor Robertson, Minister of Housing and Infrastructure and Minister responsible for Pacific Economic Development Canada, and the Honourable Tim Hodgson, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources.

This large-scale project will help support the province’s energy transition, as Nova Scotia moves from coal-based electricity generation to clean electricity by 2030. The wind farm is expected to avoid approximately 220,000 tonnes of emissions per year, equivalent to 1.5% of Nova Scotia’s carbon output in 2022.

Renewall secured Nova Scotia’s first renewable-to-retail program licence to sell electricity from 100% renewable sources directly to end customers. This licence gives residents, public institutions, commercial and industrial customers the ability to achieve emissions reductions and sustainability objectives. Construction will take place in two phases, with the first phase expected to be completed in 2027. More than 200 workers are expected to be employed at the peak of construction activities.

Dan Roscoe, Renewall

The project is being financed under the CIB’s Clean Power priority sector, which addresses financing gaps in low-carbon emissions projects such as renewables, district energy systems and energy storage.

Minister Hodgson also announced that NRCan will provide nearly $5 million in funding to Net Zero Atlantic for the Data Analysis and Modelling for Atlantic Offshore Wind and Transmission project, to support the next stage of offshore wind planning and the proposed Wind West and Atlantic Energy Strategy.

The Province of Nova Scotia’s contribution is both financial and in-kind support, valued at nearly $700,000.

Jessica Fancy, Member of Parliament for South Shore—St. Margarets, presided over the event, stating “Renewall is bringing greater choice and affordability to Nova Scotia electricity consumers for the very first time. With the support of the Canada Infrastructure Bank and the Government of Canada, the Mersey River Wind project will harness our province’s natural wind power advantage to provide clean renewable power to Nova Scotia families and businesses for decades to come.”

MP Jessica Fancy

Speakers also included Mike Shoen, Director of Investments at Canada Infrastructure Bank The Honourable Tim Houston, Premier of Nova Scotia; Dan Roscoe, President of Renewall Energy Inc; and Scott Christian, Mayor of the Region of Queens Municipality.

Jason Scott Rudderham of Hunts Point. (RCMP Nova Scotia)

A Queens County man wanted on a provincewide warrant has been arrested in Halifax.

Nova Scotia RCMP said Monday in a news release that officers with the Halifax detachment safely apprehended Jason Scott Rudderham of Hunts Point.

The 50-year-old faces charges of sexual assault, sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching, sexual exploitation and exposing his genitals to a person under 14.

Jason Scott Rudderham of Hunts Point is wanted by RCMP on a province-wide arrest warrant. (RCMP Nova Scotia)

Queens District RCMP are looking for a Hunts Point man wanted on a province-wide warrant, facing various sex charges.

Jason Scott Rudderham, 50, is charged with sexual assault, sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching, sexual exploitation and exposing his genitals to a person under 14.

Rudderham has brown hair and brown eyes, stands 5-foot-11, and weighs 234 pounds.

RCMP say they’ve made several attempts to find Rudderham and are requesting the public’s help.

Anyone with information on where Rudderham is can call Queens County District RCMP at 902-354-5721.  You can also call Nova Scotia Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477), submit a secure web tip at www.crimestoppers.ns.ca, or use the P3 Tips app.

Celeste Johnston from Hunts Point recently received her Order of Canada medal from Gov. Gen. Mary Simon at a ceremony in Ottawa. (Rick Conrad photo)

When the governor general’s office called Celeste Johnston to tell her she would be  inducted into the Order of Canada, she almost didn’t pick up.

The medical researcher, professor and nurse had been getting a lot of spam calls from the Ottawa area code, so she hesitated. But she did answer and it was a representative from Gov. Gen. Mary Simon’s office telling her she would be named an officer of the Order of Canada.

“I said, ‘Is this real? Are you serious? Is this spam?’ And she laughed and said no, it’s real, and that I’m not the first person who had asked that question.”

That was back in December 2021. Johnston, a longtime professor at McGill University who retired to Hunts Point with her husband in 2010, received her medal at a ceremony at Rideau Hall in February.

“I was a little incredulous,” she said in an interview. “And still to this day, I’m still incredulous. I just don’t think of myself as someone who would get the Order or Canada. And I thought I really don’t think I should be getting this. Look at all these other people who have gotten it. But then I started thinking about people from the McGill community who had gotten it. And I thought, ‘OK if they can get it, then I can get it too.’”

Johnston was recognized for her 35 years of work researching pain in premature babies. An internationally renowned expert and advocate for recognizing and treating infant pain, she was also the first nurse and woman to lead the Canadian Pain Society.

Celeste Johnston with her children Rob, Andrew and Elise after receiving her medal for being named an Officer of the Order of Canada. (Celeste Johnston photo)

Johnston’s groundbreaking work began when she was working at the Montreal Children’s Hospital. Nurses in the neonatal unit approached her and asked if she could measure pain in babies. They said doctors didn’t believe the babies experienced pain in the same way. But the nurses said they saw otherwise.

“At the time I started doing that work, babies were having painful procedures done all the time in the neonatal intensive care unit. And nothing was being done for it. And they said, ‘It’s just a short procedure and it’s going to be OK.’ But it isn’t OK. Not only for ethical reasons, but there are long-term consequences … above and beyond whatever medical conditions they might have as part of being pre-term.”

She and her team of researchers began by developing a way to measure pain in pre-term infants, a standard that soon became accepted by the American Hospital Association and the Canadian Pediatric Society. 

Next, they wanted to figure out how to treat the pain without drugs. 

“Because you can’t give them heavy duty analgesics every time they’re having a painful procedure because that has long-term effects too and they won’t develop as well as they should,” she says.

She began by studying the effects of giving babies a small drop of diluted sugar water, known as sweet taste treatment. That was effective in managing the pain, but Johnston was concerned about the long-term developmental effects of that kind of treatment.

She teamed up with a neuro-developmental scientist who was studying pain response in the brain of young rats who were still with their mothers. They studied how rat pups who experienced pain but were groomed by their mothers afterward seemed to do better than the baby rats who experienced no pain and didn’t receive the extra attention from their mothers.

At the same time, Johnston says, she heard about mothers in South America who acted almost like incubators for their premature babies, because of a shortage of the devices.

“And the mothers carried the babies skin to skin on their chest as the incubator. And they did it 24 hours a day. And they found that those babies that might have otherwise died survived because they were kept warm and (with) demand feeding. So I thought why don’t we try kangaroo care for pain.”

She did seven studies on kangaroo care over 12 to 15 years, in which the baby is placed against the mother’s chest skin to skin and they’re both wrapped in a blanket.

“All this worked. It was profound, the effect.”

They tried the experiment with fathers and with other women like paternal grandmothers. But nothing was as effective as a mother’s love, Johnston says. 

Eventually, Marsha Campbell-Yeo, one of Johnston’s PhD students and a professor at Dalhousie University, furthered the research and founded Mom-Linc Lab, which studies the effects of maternal presence. 

“And so I think between the kangaroo care and the work she is doing now, mothers are able to spend more and more time in the neonatal intensive care unit and not have that separation. It’s stressful on the mothers and I think it’s stressful on the babies too.” 

Johnston’s research days are behind her, but she hasn’t slowed down. She is heavily involved in various groups in Queens County, including the region’s pool committee and the community cafe at the Trinity Church parish hall. And she’s teaching a course called Pain Explained for the Seniors College Association of Nova Scotia.

Johnston said being in Ottawa for the Order of Canada ceremony was an amazing experience. And it was even more special because her three adult children, Elise, Rob and Andrew, were there with her.

“The people I was meeting around me were just amazing. They were from all walks of life. There were writers, there were musicians, businesspeople, basic scientists, a lot of health scientists. So it was very exciting to be there.”

But the visit to Rideau Hall was rivalled later in the weekend.

“I went from Ottawa to Montreal to visit with Andrew and his two young daughters, who are 3 and 5, and so I must say that competed with being the highlight of the weekend.”

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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Region of Queens administration building. Photo Ed Halverson

At the most recent Region of Queens Council meeting council landed on a site for the construction of a new library, approved a new multi-unit residential development and discussed creating a policy for selling municipal property.

The meeting started with a pair of presentations.

The first by North Queens Active Living detailed the programs they offer and benefit they bring to the community.

The group is currently working towards gaining status as a society.

They’re asking council to continue supporting their work in the upcoming budget to the tune of $16,500.

Next, the Region of Queens Pool Committee outlined their desire to build the new outdoor pool at Queens Place as well as some rough timelines and next steps.

If all goes to plan, their aim is to begin construction in 2024 with the goal of opening the pool to the public in spring of 2025.

Council then followed up on the public meeting held before session and granted the request to convert a multi-unit building in Hunts Point from short-term to long-term rentals.

They also agreed to the name “Ocean Side Drive” for the road going into a proposed development near the hospital in Liverpool called “The Point”.

After much back and forth over the past year council accepted the library committee recommendation to build the replacement for the Thomas H Raddall library at Queens Place.

When the recommendation first came to council in June of 2022 some councillors didn’t want to see the library moved from downtown Liverpool.

Since then, the committee has looked into several different site options but determined any of those would increase the cost of construction by half a million dollars.

Council also considered the Rossignol Centre in which the library currently sits has been put on the market and a quick sale could leave the county without a library.

During the discussion portion of the meeting council asked staff to come back at a future date with options on a policy for the disposal of municipal properties.

Some members of council cited the recent proposed regional airport sale and the upset it caused all parties involved as the reason to have a process in place that was fair, transparent and easily understood when selling municipally owned land.

And finally, council heard from staff that the recent tax sale saw 16 properties sold for a total of $327,450.

Of that, $34,500.58 will pay off outstanding accounts and $292,949.42 will be held in the tax sale surplus reserve in trust for 20 years to give owners the opportunity to recoup the proceeds of the sale.

Council will take their next meeting on the road to Brooklyn on January 24.

The session will begin at 6:00pm at the Brooklyn Community Hall.

E-mail: edhalversonnews@gmail.com
Twitter: @edwardhalverson

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