Opinions wanted

A local community group will hold a meeting next week to discuss a broad range of topics surrounding the Frenchvale area.

The Frenchvale and Area Community Endeavours committee will hold its annual general meeting on Monday at 7 p.m. at the Frenchvale Road fire hall.

The meeting will feature representatives from the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure as well as Seaside Cable to discuss roads and high-speed internet.

“When we talked to people from rural areas, high-speed internet is always an issue, people like to download Netflix and play online games … in rural areas, it doesn’t seem to work well,” said John Aikens, spokesperson for the committee.

“Last summer the Frenchvale Road was reconstructed for about 10 km … they’re going to finish the rest of that road (this year), so we thought people would have questions about it.”

Endeavours was formed in 2010 under the guidance of the Cape Breton County Economic Development Association, with the vision of outlining goals and objectives within the communities of Balls Creek, Leitches Creek, Upper Leitches Creek, Frenchvale and Beechmont.

The committee has been successful with a number of projects including the creation of an information kiosk display for Frenchvale as well as the Frenchvale Brook Hiking Trail.

The next big project for the group is building a playground at the Frenchvale fire hall.

The committee has already started fundraising for the project and will release plans for the playground at Monday’s meeting.

“We’re really excited about the playground, we have some good plans and fundraising underway and we have some grants from the government, so we’re moving ahead with it,” said Aikens.

“We’re thinking of things, perhaps a skating rink might be of interest to people or maybe a soccer field, for future projects.”

Aikens encourages community members to attend the meeting and have their voices and opinions heard.

“If people have issues that they want to talk about we would like to hear them, and this is their opportunity,” said Aikens. “We need input from the community to see what kind of projects they want to do.”

Frenchvale and Area Community Endeavours is also seeking new committee members.

For more information visit the Facebook page by searching Frenchvale and Area Community Endeavours or by phoning Aikens at 902-794-2963.