Looking back at Yarmouth County history
There had been uncertainty about Air Canada’s future in Yarmouth, but the word from the airline was that it had no plans to leave, at least not for now, and if it did leave Yarmouth at some point in the future, it would ensure the area was served by another carrier. This was the gist of a front-page story in the Vanguard from early March 1970. At the time, the Canadian Transport Commission and its air transport committee were said to be examining air service in Canada and would determine which routes were suitable for service by regional carriers.
Preparations continued for a new ferry that would sail between Nova Scotia and Maine. The launch of the Prince of Fundy ferry service connecting Yarmouth and Portland was a few months away. An official with Lion Ferry, the company that would operate the new service, said a challenge for Yarmouth-area tourism operators, travel agents and others was to try to get the word out to potential visitors about what was available in southwestern Nova Scotia in terms of places to stay and things to do. Meanwhile, on another ferry-related note, work was to be done on terminal facilities in both Yarmouth and Portland.
The Town of Yarmouth had a problem with dogs, but it was by no means a new one, according to a presentation to Yarmouth town council by Arthur Hawkes, a veterinarian, who said the last time he had attended a town council meeting was 17 years before.
His presentation back then, he recalled, had been about the same issue: dogs. “This shows what kind of progress has been made,” Hawkes said. “Owners of dogs who let their dogs roam over neighbours’ property at will have no respect for another person’s property.”
In sports, a team from Yarmouth had won the annual
City Drug bowling tournament at Brunswick Lanes, snapping a three-year hold on the tournament championship by a team from Kentville. The winning Yarmouth team consisted of Roger Nickerson, Bruce Hopkins, George Baker, Anzil Blackadar, Cliff O’Connell and Stan LeBlanc.
Two questions many local people were thinking about in the winter of 1980 was whether a tin mine would be developed in Yarmouth County and, if so, how many jobs would it create. But neither query could yet be answered, according to an official with Shell Canada Resources Ltd., which had been doing exploratory work in East Kemptville. “We can’t call it a mine yet,” said Ben Baldwin, the company’s manager of mineral exploration. “It’s simply too early to tell.” More drilling and testing were planned for the coming months, but Baldwin couldn’t say if a decision to develop a mine or not would be made before the end of the year.
The Town of Yarmouth received the first shipment of tree planters. Installation of the concrete planters was part of an effort to give the downtown a new look, but the early response from the public was not great. Many people apparently didn’t know what to make of the planters. Indeed, according to a story in the Vanguard, when people saw the planters for the first time, a frequently heard question was, “What are they?” One of the people involved in the project said the planters would “make more sense when people see them with trees planted in them.”
Tourism was the top growth industry in the province and its value to the Nova Scotia economy was expected to reach $1 billion by the end of the 1990s, said Roland Thornhill, the province’s minister of tourism and culture. He was speaking at a dinner hosted by the Yarmouth Chamber of Commerce, where local restaurateur Clara Harris was honoured as the chamber’s citizen of the year.
ALSO FROM 1990:
• Dick Crabbe, a former physed teacher and guidance counsellor, had received an award from the Nova Scotia School Athletic Federation for his “outstanding contribution’ to school sports in the Yarmouth area.