Looking back at Shelburne County history

From 1982

Poor market conditions were keeping lobster prices down. Fishermen were getting around $3 per pound and sales were said to be very slow. There was a recession at the time and this was cited as the biggest issue facing the industry, with demand for lobsters down. As one Shelburne County fisherman put it, “Lobster is a luxury item and there’s not too much we can do about it; people aren’t squandering their money.” Bad weather had been another problem, with a number of storms hitting the region. Many fishermen reportedly had fishing equipment damaged in the rough conditions.

A local group – Care of Animals in Need – had recently been accepted as the official Shelburne County branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and had leased a building which, according to a local newspaper item, could become the site of the first full-time veterinary clinic in the county.

Planned construction of an overpass for the Ohio Road/Highway 103 intersection was being delayed, possibly until the summer. The project had been announced in April of the previous year (1981). Initially, construction was expected to start in the fall of ’81, but the planning process for the project had taken longer than anticipated.

Pierce Fisheries Ltd. was seeking federal approval of a plan the company said would create up to 90 new jobs at its Lockeport plant and help a community that was going through a tough time economically.

As another step in Canada’s shift to the metric system, grocery stores were getting ready to use metric measurements in their labelling, pricing and weighing of meat, fish and other items. The changeover was scheduled for late spring 1982.

On the Shelburne County sports/recreation scene in early 1982:

-- Lockeport’s junior high school girls basketball team was undefeated after a dozen games, their latest win being a lopsided victory over Shelburne.

--The Town of Clark’s Harbour and Municipality of Barrington had agreed to provide financial help to the Teddy Swimm Me- morial Pool.

From 1995

Municipal amalgamation – or at least talk of it – was in the news. Shelburne municipal council had accepted an invitation from the Town of Shelburne to discuss the idea, but the Town of Clark’s Harbour and Municipality of Barrington reportedly had declined. One Barrington councillor at the time said he would rather wait to see what happened with amalgamation in Cape Breton and Halifax before it was considered in Shelburne County. The Town of Lockeport had not said where it stood on the issue, saying it was waiting to see what the other local units did first.

The province was looking to designate certain areas as protected – including three in Shelburne County – and public sessions were to be held in Shelburne to discuss the province’s plan. The three areas in the plan touching on Shelburne County were the Tobeatic, Tidney River and Bowers Meadows.

As the calendar turned from 1994 to 1995, many in Shelburne would remember ’94 as the year of The Scarlet Letter. The filming of the movie was said to have injected $15 million in Nova Scotia, including $12.5 million in Shelburne County. Fifteen buildings had been constructed in Shelburne for the movie and about 1,200 people from western Nova Scotia had been a part of the production as extras.

The third day of the new year brought the season’s second snowstorm, which reportedly resulted in a “rash of minor accidents” on Shelburne County roads.