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7193 East Bay Hwy
AED (automated external defibrillator) On-Site
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If you enjoy Celtic folk music combined with contemporary, progressive sounds from bagpipes, mandolin, accordion, bodhran, electric guitar, bass and drums then MacIntyre's Field in Big Pond Centre on Friday, 18 July at 8:00 PM is the definitive location. The dynamic group RAWLINS CROSS (Dave Panting, Ian MacKinnon, Geoff Panting, Joey Kitson, Brian Bourne and Howie Southwood) headline the 33rd Annual Big Pond Festival.
Minutes for the June meeting were not available at press time but someone assured the TIMES that not a heck of a lot transpired. The executive were putting the final touches on the waterfront development project, leases and the like. A nominations committee will be struck at the next meeting to come up with possible replacements for departing members of the Community Council executive. Elections are in September. The next meeting of Community Council is Wednesday, 2 July, 7:30 in the meeting room at the Fire Hall.
COMMUNITY NOTES
The Big Pond Fire Hall opened yesterday, 29 June for the summer. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday the day begins at 4pm; Sunday at 2pm, Tuesday at 6pm. The newest member of the Volunteer Fire Department is John Pronk.The newest member of the Volunteer Fire Department is John Pronk. Fire Chief Frank Sampson notes that our communications equipment is being linked directly to Central Dispatch. The number is 911. The winner of the Ladies' Auxiliary draw for lobsters was Alan MacLeod. Those who know best at the Regional Municipality have decreed that Big Pond Centre no longer exists. The latest municipal map obliterated the feisty little community; it is now officially part of greater Big Pond. Residents of the area in question assured the TIMES they are alive and well. Rumours of a plot by the "Brookers" are unfounded. A.A. MacNeil's store will not open this summer, ending another long tradition. MacNeil's General Store served the community for well over 100 years, initially by Anthony MacNeil, who died in 1909. Angus Anthony and his wife Annie continued the tradition and they were followed by Alex in 1947 and later his wife Marie. The polished wooden counter, the amazingly neat shelves, the range of supplies and the courtesy of three generations of MacNeil's will be sorely missed. TARTAN EAGLE RESTAURANT & GIFT SHOP opened its doors in early June under the management of Raymond Duprey. All the reports that the TIMES has heard have been extremely positive. The hours for July are 7am-10pm daily. It is definitely the place to dine in Big Pond this summer. BIG POND FESTIVAL SOUVENIRS: new styles and new colours join the favourites this year. If you can't wait until the concerts at MacIntyre's Field, drop in to the nearest official outlet, the TARTAN EAGLE RESTAURANT & GIFT SHOP. Joanne Donovan's Cape Breton Shop is opening on Barrington St. in Halifax in July. Good luck. Joe Donovan is still trying to shake off the shame of going aground on the treacherous shoals of Frank's Pond in the 40' Y'KNOT. He's back before the mast.
NEW BRUNSWICK ACADIANS IN BIG POND AND AREA I was working in Nova Scotia in the winter of 1942 until I got the call to go to the army. I went back to New Brunswick where I joined the army. I can't describe to you how hard it was on my mother the day I left. Her mother was buried that morning and I was leaving that afternoon. I did my basic training in Edmundston and then went to Val Cartier, Quebec for advanced training. Everything went fine in basic training. There were no problems and I enjoyed it, but shortly after it was completed we went on a route march where something unexpected turned up. Coming back I began having bad pains in my feet and legs and they became so severe and so much swelling developed that I had to drop out to the roadside and I had to be transported back to the base. The doctors who examined me wondered how I had passed the physical exam to enter he services in the first place. I was surprised. I said I had been considered A-1 when I joined up. the doctors told me that I had flat feet and that I would have to be discharged. And so I was, on 9 March 1943. So I had seen my twentieth birthday in the army-and my nineteenth in St. Francis Harbour. That winter I worked with my father in the woods and the following spring my cousin Edgar Duguay asked me to work on the timber drive down the Grande Riviere to Tracadie so that kept me busy for the spring. I met Clare when I returned from the army. She was just back from Quebec where she had taken a year off from her job in a munitions plant in Montreal. In time she went back to Montreal. In was in the summer time and I had no work-I had work but wanted something else to do. I wrote my uncle Arcade who was working in Cape Breton and asked him if he had any work for me. He told me he had some work for he had just gotten hold of a 200 acre woodlot from Dan Neil Morrison. He said he was alone, that he used to have men hired but had gotten away from that, but he would like some company and if I wanted to come down I was welcome. I wrote him back to say I couldn't come for a couple of weeks for in a few days I had to stand with Clare at her brother's wedding, and that the following week I had to play the fiddle at uncle Eddie Duguay's wedding. The next thing I knew Arcade and his wife arrived home to attend both weddings. When they returned to Cape Breton I came with them and arrived in Loch Lomond, in Drummondville, on 15 July 1944. Perhaps I should mention how uncle Arcade happened to come to Cape Breton. He had come to work for a man who ended up being his father-in-law, a man by the name of Vincent Savoie. He was in the area of Saint Peters. He was a lumberman, a pulp contractor here and there, and he came up to New Brunswick during the thirties looking for men. It was in the sap-peeling time, the summer time, and he came up with a bus and he got a busload of people to come up. Uncle Arcade was one of them. And then there was Alban and Gerald Thomas' father, Mike, and there was Teddy Duguay and there was a good many more. I think there were twenty of them come up during the sap-peeling season. And uncle Arcade fell in love with aunt Doris, Vincent Savoie's daughter, and he married her and he stayed up here. The others went back home, as they were married, most of them anyway. So uncle Arcade was one of the first to come up from my family and this is how it started, with him being up here. So that's how I arrived in Drummondville in 1944. Jack MacNeil
STORIES FROM ST. ANDREW'S CHANNEL Mick the Lantern, brother of Dan J. MacIsaac, grandfather of Donnie MacPhee, had a son Daniel (Squeaky Danny) who always had his stoker papers in his hat when he left home in case the military police would try to take him to join the army. Squeaky went to Montreal to escape the draft and wrote a letter to his father Mick and said he was getting along good with the French people. Mick was proud of that and went to his neighbour, Little Dan MacIsaac, and said: "Daniel is getting along good in Montreal; he now has the three talks, Gaelic, English and French." Deaf John MacIsaac, uncle to Hector MacIsaac and my grand-uncle, was walking to church in Big Pond when Eddie Gordon's bus stopped to pick him up. Eddie Gordon was a very considerate man; if there was room on the bus he would pick up passengers free. He was on his normal run from Sydney to Arichat on Sunday with very few passengers so he was picking people up on their way to church. By the time he arrived at Deaf John's the bus was full. He stopped, John entered the bus, saw the crowd and said: "There's nobody home." Kate MacDougall was walking to Angus Anthony's store when John "Johnny Mick" MacIsaac, who was working on the road, said to Kate: "Did you hear that Little Dan died?" "Yes," Kate said. John said: "They say he died of a stroke, but I believe it was a mark." Kate replied: "Could be." Donald "Duke" MacIsaac
BIG POND TIMES: Founded in 1994. "It is a newspaper's duty to print the news and raise hell." - Chicago Times, 1861.
Circulation : 250
This issue was brought to you by Josephine McCarron, Carol MacDonald, Dennis MacDonald, Don MacGillivray, Donald Duke MacIsaac, Sharise McKeigan, Cora MacNeil Jack MacNeil, Lindsay MacPhee. Deadline for submissions to the August issue is July 24.
The editor for August is Dennis MacDonald: 828-3417.
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