Cheers &Jeers

CHEERS: FEMALE HOCKEY

Two of this region's most wellknown female hockey players recently made big debuts with big teams in hockey rinks.

Allie Munroe, who grew up playing minor hockey in Yarmouth, is part of the Toronto team in the Professional Women's Hockey League. The PWHL made its historic debut on New Year's Day. On social media were many posts in the tri-counties about people not just watching Allie and cheering her on, but expressing how proud of her they are.

The same goes for Jessica MacKinnon who has been playing for Team Canada at the 2024 IIHF U18 Women's World Championship in Zug, Switzerland. Jessica hails from Clark's Harbour and grew up playing minor hockey in Shelburne County.

Team Canada's games have been streamed live at the Barrington Municipal Administrative Building where her community can gather to cheer her on as they too are so very proud of her accomplishments.

Best yet, there are other young girls out there who are likely looking up to Allie and Jessica and thinking if they can do this, then maybe I can too.

Keep an eye out for further coverage of Allie and Jessica in future issues of the TriCounty Vanguard.

JEERS: UNFINISHED HIGHWAY

It's a section of roadway – part of Highway 101 – that runs through numerous residential communities in Digby County where the mix of local traffic, school buses, driveways, pedestrians, transport trucks, etc. doesn't exactly make for ideal conditions for through traffic as part of a 100-series highway.

Yes, the posted speed limit signs are reduced to 80 and 90 kilometres an hour, but even those are fast speeds for residential communities and truthfully vehicles looking to get from Point A to Point B on the highway are often driving much faster than that.

When the province completed the Digby to Marshalltown four-kilometre corridor in 2019 that bypasses a section of Trunk 1 on this highway – which was long ago called the Evangeline Trail – it was stated when construction began two years before that this was the first phase of controlled access highway work between Digby and Weymouth North.

And yet here we are with no mention of any work in the province's most recently released Five Year Highway Improvement Plan.

Is it ever coming? Residents and drivers would like to know.