Falling star, courtesy of Venus and a contrail.
Photo taken at my grandmother's house.
Meet the Mayors
I continued my schmoozing on Wednesday night at the Kin Center across the river. Like other cities in New Brunswick, there will be a municipal election on May 10, so this was a chance to hear the mayoral candidates speak. Many of them are familiar... actually all of them have a history in politics, likely close to 75 years between just the four candidates before. I got a chance to meet a few of them afterwards. I also was asked to join the Rotary Club which I can't help thinking of as a bit nerdish but I'll seriously give it a thought. To date I've joined my local business group, but it'd be good to join something which is river-wide and encompasses the whole city.
It's local politics so I'm going to keep my bias down a bit on this. I will give you a short bio however. We have four people running for mayor and a couple dozen people running to be councilors. Of the mayoral candidates, we've seen them all before. None of the speeches were entirely original or unique, I am sorry to say.
Frank Trevors is currently the deputy mayor. He's a bit hard to hear though. He spoke fast, and mumbled a lot into the mic. Of the words I caught, his prepared material sounded good enough.
Gerry Cormier is currently a councilor. He words were more simple but he gave them with a hint of passion that has to make you smile. He's a bit famous however for making a motion in council a couple of months ago-- and then voting against his own motion.
John McKay is also a councillor right now, but it probably more well know from the days that he served in the McKenna government as a local MLA. That experience could work for or against him him. While there's no official party politics at the municipal level, Miramichi is the kind of place where you party affiliation hovers over your head at the supermarket, the gas station, even bingo.
Arch Pafford is also a provincial veteran, but his parties no longer exist. He founded both the C.O.R. (Confederation of Regions party) and the Grey party (senior citizens advocacy-type party). It's his time with C.O.R. that colours his current perception however. C.O.R. was a single platform party essentially. It sought to combat official bilingualism. In fact, when a question about billigualism was posed Wednesday night, the question was specifically directed at the other three candidates while Pafford was intentionally left out of the answers. That's going to attract a certain kind of voter. In defence of the guy, he's also the president of the local S.P.C.A., and he's the only candidate who is running that isn't already serving on what is perceived to be an infighting and ineffectual council.
Whoever wins, they must be prepared to try again to unite the two sides of the river, although it gets increasingly difficult when only Newcastle gets any funding. The business around me on Waterstreet Chatham are good examples. They're all going bankrupt. Even the one remaining nightclub, Choo Choo's is rumoured to be closing-- as is "Ben's" hamburger stand. That place has been a family-run business for over 60 years. If it goes, you'll see rats on rafts shortly after.
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