Lennoxville name to return in the new year
Lennoxville residents can rest easy following discussion at Monday night’s City Council meeting that confirms the borough will have its old name back in short order. Concerns were raised in the community following the discovery that the borough had been renamed “borough no. 3” following the November 5 municipal elections.
“It was discussed yesterday and it will be up to each borough council to determine its process and name,” said Sherbrooke City Council President Nicole Bergeron, clarifying that the Lennoxville council is free to establish its name as of its next sitting on December 12. The council president added, however, that the borough will officially retain its number designation until all the other boroughs have also made their decisions.
“It will likely go to next year,” Bergeron said, explaining that the desire is to have all of the names come into effect at the same time.
Bergeron also confirmed that the reasoning behind the name change was a legal matter. When the city went from six boroughs to four, she said, the entire city structure was seen to have been changed even though the borders of Lennoxville were left in exactly the same place. Given the “new” structure, “borough no. 3” was given a number just like the other three boroughs as a placeholder until the new council could confirm the desire to keep the name Lennoxville.
Lennoxville Borough President Claude Charron said that the news took a weight off his shoulders.
“It’s just a formality,” Charron said, “There shouldn’t be any problems.”
The Borough President repeated the fact that there was never any intention of changing the name on the part of the local council, but he acknowledged the challenges faced by the councils in the recently merged Rock-forest-saint-elie-deauvillebrompton and Jacques-cartier-mont-bellevue boroughs.
Sherbrooke second-hand shop Estrie Aide kicked off its third edition of La Quinzaine du recyclage artistique yesterday at the Wellington Street store.
Until Dec. 15, an exhibition at the back of the store will exhibit the work of six local artists who use recycled items in their artwork.
The purpose of the ten-day event is to highlight the environmental mission of Estrie Aide, which collects, cleans, repairs and sells close to a million articles of all types each year.
Among the six artists featured is Bishop’s University fine arts student Kalin Sarrasin, from Compton.
Sarrasin is participating in La Quinzaine for the second year. He was approached by a friend who knew the store was looking for artists who work with recycled and salvaged items.
“We’re such a consumer society,” Sarrasin said. “We buy, we throw away,” he said, preferring to try and give a second life to discarded items.
“It’s all sourced locally,” he said, referring to his materials.
While Sarrasin said he used to create pieces that were just aesthetic, with smaller homes becoming the trend and people having less and less money to spend on art, he now prefers to create things that are useful, but still pleasing to the eye.
He pointed to a stool and side table as examples of his work.
Sarrasin said the wood from one of his tables was salvaged from pallets from the Lowney factory in Sherbrooke. He then added metal piping which he acquired from a drycleaning business that closed to fashion a lamp, built into the table.
The other artists included in the Estrie Aide exposition are Guy Lapierre, Anny Favreau, Ida Rivard, Zohra Benchegra-brousseau and Étienne Cyr.
In addition to the exhibition in the store, there will also be a series of mini concerts at Estrie Aide over the next two weeks, performed by a choir of store employees and volunteers.
On the final day of La Quinzaine, on Dec. 15, five artists will spend a full day from 9 a.m. till 5 p.m. working on art that they will create on the spot using items from the store. Customers are invited to stop by throughout the day and watch regular everyday things be transformed into works of art.