Sarah Pledge Dickson, LJI Journalist
Dozens of Otter Lake residents gathered at the town’s recreation hall on Saturday evening to share a potluck feast and map out their vision for what they would like their community to become.
The collective brainstorming session was the first event hosted by the town’s recently formed Otter Lake Community Assembly, which founder Thomas Villeneuve hopes will become a space where residents can discuss community issues, as well as possible solutions.
For the first meeting, though, Villeneuve was focused on getting the community in the door.
“While we were setting up [yesterday], a man walked up to me and he says, ‘Oh, I’ve just heard about this event. I moved to town recently and there’s not enough things to do so I’m going to be there tomorrow,’” Villeneuve recalled. “And that just made my day.”
Villeneuve explained the event would be the jumping-off point for the assembly.
“The premise of this event had changed a little bit since what I had originally conceived of,” Villeneuve told THE EQUITY.
“There’s a lot more participation focus in the event. We’re going to workshop with everyone to figure out what are the things that people of the community want to get started with? What projects can we actually take on?”
To help with the discussion, Villeneuve brought in two group facilitators to help each table come up with three ideas for how to better the community.
“We want to challenge them to come up with their wildest, most passionate, most joyful and most necessary projects they can think of,” said Kris Cartier Lafleur, one of the facilitators.
By the end of the session, the group of about 80 participants had come up with five priority areas to help focus the assembly’s efforts. They were shared in a Facebook post, which lists them as follows:
- Nature to Table: Anything related to growing, harvest, and processing food. This includes gardening, canning, butchering etc.
- Learning and Development: Anything related to acquiring new skills, from quilting to financial literacy!
- Town Enhancement: Anything focused on beautifying the town! Let’s clean up our lakes, our streets, plant trees, and build benches!
- Collaboration: Anything aimed at finding better ways to work with and communicate with the municipality.
- Special Projects: Anything related to hosting special events, like firefighter competitions, lumberjack challenges, haunted walks, job fairs, etc.
Otter Lake mayor Jennifer Quaile said she was impressed with the turnout and all the ideas that were presented by residents and guests.
“I think it’s a great place to share ideas in these sorts of forums, this is where the discussions should happen,” Quaile said. “Then, they can come to the council if they need municipal support in some way.”
She said that there were many great ideas, but something that stuck out to her was how many people wanted to bring back or revamp events, such as the annual winter carnival, trivia nights, teen dances or hockey nights.
“One idea that really impressed me was having a first responder competition in Otter Lake,” Quaile said. “It was brought forward by one of our residents who is a first responder. He was thinking big, but there were a lot of interesting ideas.”
Villeneuve explained that now, people can sign up to support any of the five project areas that were identified on Saturday evening. At the assembly’s next meeting in May, he said participants will be invited to start thinking about how to tackle the ideas generated from this session.
“[An idea] could come out of left field that everybody is excited for,” Villeneuve said. “That’s what’s really exciting, we’re going to see what the community actually wants to do.”