SACKVILLE, NEW BRUNSWICK

SACKVILLE, A CLASSY LITTLE TOWN

A weekend is not a lot of time to judge a place, but Sackville, N.B. does seem to be a place where it’s respectable to be thoughtful. Where poets are respected. One poet, Douglas Lochhead, has his work not only printed in books but displayed on utility poles so you can read “High Marsh Road” in 31 verses as you walk through town. You can connect with nature and get exercise on the three kilometre waterfowl park where sculpture by local artists can also be seen along with ducks, geese, muskrats, redwing blackbirds and other wildlife. Museums and a harness shop along with a Carriage Factory make Sackville a very historical town, often called “The Cultural Crossroads”. Colville House honours the most famous Canadian painter who ever resided in this town. There’s no lack of theatres, movie houses, craft shops and art galleries.
It’s a clean town perhaps because of a citizen, Harold Geddes, who was honoured for his twenty years of keeping the Main Street swept and neat. His monument stands at the corner with a sculpture of his broom and shovel.
Mount Allison University is a short walk from the centre of town an has a wonderful art gallery, Owens Art Gallery with over 3,000 works of art in it’s collection.
Charlottetown, should take a lesson or two from little Sackville, a thinking person’s kind of town. We should compare the Art Gallery and Art department of UPEI to a place that thinks a University should be something more than a ‘trade school’. Have we ever really honoured our poets and painters? We have a park with a fine pond used to dump trash in. I didn’t see plastic water bottles, beer cans and other rubbish floating in the waterfowl park in Sackville. You didn’t have to pay to park in the town and bike parking racks were everywhere. The farmers market is in the heart of the town and the downtown was still very much alive.