Listen to Tantramar Report for the following stories:

Local CUPE strikers say “it’s time for a change.”

All schools in the province are in online learning mode today as a strike by a number of CUPE locals, including many school workers, was met by the province with a lockout action over the weekend. On Friday, CHMA visited the picket line in downtown Sackville on the corner of Bridge and Main, and spoke to CUPE shop steward Pat Lekas. Lekas says, “it’s time for a change” after four years with no wage increase for CUPE Local 2745, which represents school staff including educational assistants, library workers and payroll clerks. Lekas says the picket line was getting “tremendous, awesome support” from locals bringing coffee and snacks, and beeping horns in support.

Horizon scales back, elective and day surgeries cancelled

Horizon says it needs to “scale back certain health care services, and suspend other services entirely,” until a strike by hospital workers in CUPE local 1252 is resolved. The health network announced a series of service changes on Sunday afternoon:

• All visitation at hospitals will be restricted, and Designated Support Persons (DSP)s will only be permitted in exceptional circumstances, on a case by case basis.
• All elective and day surgeries are cancelled.
• All ambulatory care clinics, laboratory services and diagnostic/medical imaging exams are cancelled—unless you have been notified by Horizon that your appointment remains in place.
• All routine or elective tests are cancelled at all hospitals and health centres.
• All therapeutic services, including physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech language pathology, audiology, clinical nutrition and psychology, are cancelled unless you have been notified by Horizon that your appointment remains in place.

Horizon says oncology and dialysis treatments will continue, and Obstetrical Patients can still get to Labor and Delivery units if they enter the hospital through the Emergency Room.

Horizon says that some health centres may be closed while others will have reduced services, and they advise people to call facilities directly to see what services are available.

Council meets tonight to talk health care fund, multi-purpose building, and skatepark

Sackville town council will meet tonight for their monthly special meeting, where council previews and has a chance to discuss some of the decisions they’ll be asked to make at their regular meeting next week. On tonight’s agenda:

Council will discuss a funding request from the Rural Health Action Group. $10,000 is proposed in the current draft of the budget to go towards a health care recruitment fund.

Staff will also give updates on two potential long term capital projects: the rough estimate on building a new multi-purpose building for the town, and a skatepark feasibility study are both coming back for discussion.

Two policies are on the agenda, the flyer bylaw and council remuneration, as well as street closures for a Moonlight Madness event with fireworks.

The local RCMP detachment will present a quarterly report, and council will hear three other presentations: Harold Jarche on “sharing our public paths’, the New Brunswick Invasive Species Council, and Sackville’s Business Improvement Area.

What’s not on the agenda tonight is the proposed Sackville town budget for 2022, which will go up for approval at next Monday’s regular meeting. Treasurer Michael Beal said on Friday that staff are still not sure if an extra meeting to discuss proposed changes to the budget draft will be necessary.

Last week, Councillor Sabine Dietz proposed changes to the current budget draft, including a climate change contingency fund to help cover costs of climate change project opportunities throughout 2022.

To attend tonight’s meeting, contact town clerk Donna Beal, or listen in online.

Renée Belliveau brings alive voices of tragic Mount A fire

In 1941, a fire broke out in a men’s residence at Mount Allison University, engulfing the building in a matter of minutes, and killing four people. Nearly eighty years later, archivist Renée Belliveau came across documents related to the tragic fire in her work at the Mount Allison University archives. Belliveau says the voices that she heard in those archives stuck with her, so much so that she decided to bring them alive in a new work of historical fiction. The Sound of Fire is Belliveau’s latest book, and is being launched this Thursday in a virtual event commemorating the anniversary of the fire. Belliveau dropped by CHMA studios to talk about her new book and this week’s event, listen to Tantramar Report to hear her in conversation.

The Sound of Fire will be launched this Thursday in a commemorative event online. You can register for the event here. Signed copies of the Sound of Fire are available at Tidewater Books in Sackville.

Mountie sports update: women’s x-country takes first, women’s soccer and men’s football in playoffs

The Mount Allison women’s cross country team took first place on Saturday in the 2021 ACAA championships in Truro. Runners Kiona Osterlin, Teagan Stewart, and Lauren Doyle took first, second and third in the team rankings after a six kilometre race in Victoria Park, Truro.

The Mount Allison Men’s Team placed second, behind Crandall University, with Isaac McCardle and Jacob Macphee placing fourth and fifth in team rankings.

In football, the Mounties locked up a home football game with a 13-8 win over Acadia in Wolfville on Saturday. The win puts the Mounties in 2nd place in the AUS standings, and the team will now host one of the two AUS semi-finals on Saturday, November 13th.

The Mount Allison women’s soccer Mounties will also be headed to AUS playoffs this year. With a tie against UNB on Friday, the team will head to Cape Breton next weekend for the AUS women’s soccer championship tournament.

Horizon announces further ER service reduction in Sackville

Horizon Health Network announced this morning that effective Friday, November 19, Sackville emergency room hours will be reduced to daytime only, with the ER open 8am to 4pm seven days a week.

Horizon’s announcement says, “emergency care will not be offered during the evening or night, and all patients and clients requiring medical care will need to seek treatment at another hospital.”

Overnight emergency care has been unavailable in Sackville on weekend nights since June 11, 2021. Read more about this story here.