Bristol

Chamber of Commerce AGM a relaunch, says president

Local Journalism Initiative / / / , ,

Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist

At the Pontiac Chamber of Commerce’s annual general meeting on Thursday evening, Chamber president Sébastien Bonnerot’s message was clear: the regional business development organization is building itself back better and stronger than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic knocked the wind out of its sails.

“We’re at a very important moment for the chamber, at a crossroads,” Bonnerot said to the small crowd of chamber members, partners, and local politicians gathered at Pine Lodge.

“As you know COVID was a big big challenge to any networking organization. It’s very tough to get people out of their basements. As an organization, we have been struggling and we’ve worked extremely hard to get back on track.”

Bonnerot said that while at one point before the pandemic the Chamber had over 100 members, this number dropped to under 100 in the past four years.

He explained that getting the Chamber back on track has involved organizing more events to bring members of Pontiac’s business community together, revising and updating the organization’s bylaws and standards of practice to stay in alignment with the most recent version of the Boards of Trade Act, revamping the Chamber’s website so it is more user friendly, and developing more corporate sponsorship agreements to bring more benefits to Chamber members.

“We have a whole bunch of advantages corporately, but we’re still working on that. It’s a long haul, it’s not overnight,” Bonnerot told THE EQUITY, listing discounts at Giant Tiger, at local gas stations, and on insurance programs as just some of the benefits offered to members.

‘The goal would be to perhaps double not only our membership count but also our sponsorships and major partnerships. We’re getting more and more traction now with the bigger companies outside the Pontiac to participate and help us.”

Exploring relationship with CNL

One such bigger company with which the Chamber is exploring the possibility of sponsorship is Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), the consortium of companies responsible for developing and managing the Chalk River nuclear research station in Deep River, Ont.

Last winter CNL was set to sponsor the Chamber’s annual gala. Then, only a few weeks before the event, the federal nuclear safety agency gave the go-ahead for CNL’s plans to build a nuclear waste disposal facility one kilometre from the Ottawa River.

In response, Pontiac’s council of mayors voted unanimously against the waste disposal project, and out of a sensitivity to this sentiment, the Chamber cancelled CNL’s sponsorship.

“Although we do want our members to benefit from as much money and input as we can get from these businesses like CNL, you have to be sensitive to the fact that some people are strongly against their projects,” Bonnerot said.

“We’re talking with them now to see how we can reintegrate them back into our operations,” he added, noting the first step will likely be inviting representatives to offer a presentation in the Pontiac about their work at Chalk River.

“I thought it was fair to offer CNL the opportunity to take the floor, to present sometime this fall about the details of their project, so they can have that conversation with the business community, as opposed to being judged, but not having any communication.”

Two new board members

Two long-time members of the Chamber’s board of directors stepped down last year – Isabelle Gagnon and Mireille Alary.

At Thursday’s meeting, two new Pontiac residents joined the board – Gema Villavicencio of Ferme Pure Conscience and Rachel Floar Sandé, a member of MRC Pontiac’s economic development team.

“I think business owners and the business community are the ones who will make things happen here,” Villavicencio said of her reason for joining the board, noting her belief that change has to come from the ground up.

“We have a huge area and we have a huge potential.”

Floar Sandé did not attend the meeting.

The seven other board members include Todd Hoffman, Trefor Munn-Venn, Rhonda Morrison, Patrick Lasalle, Lisa Boisvert, Ronald MacKillop, Michel Denault, and Sébastien Bonnerot.

Once the new team was formed, those present performed an oath to make their membership official.

“We have different board members from very different backgrounds in the board now,” Bonnerot said.

“So every time someone new joins the board we get new ideas and new momentum.”

The Chamber did not have a financial report to present at this year’s AGM as it only received the final numbers the morning before the meeting, and Bonnerot said the team found there to be some inaccuracies so sent them back for revisions.

He said the Chamber’s financial statement would be posted to the website once a final version is received.

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Community Players gear up for show about rural family life

Local Journalism Initiative / / / , ,

K.C. Jordan, LJI Reporter

Bristol’s Coronation Hall played host to the Pontiac Community Players on Thursday night as they rehearsed their summer production.

The community theatre group is putting the final touches on its show, an adaptation of Toronto playwright David S. Craig’s Having Hope at Home, to be performed over three days next week.

The rehearsal went largely without a hitch, save for a few panicked calls of “Line?” from the actors.

The play is set at an old farmhouse in rural Ontario, and the plot centres around a young pregnant couple, Carolyn and Michel, who are set to welcome their new baby into the world with the help of their midwife, Dawn.

Tensions flare as Carolyn’s father Bill, an obstetrician, can’t seem to get on board with his daughter’s decision to have a home birth instead of going to the hospital.

Bill’s wife Jane and father Russell each chime in with their own two cents, while the erstwhile happy couple try to find peace amidst the familial chaos.

William Bastien and Darlene Pashak are co-directing the Pontiac Community Players’ adaptation of this story.

Bastien said the play is both heart-warming and heart-wrenching at points.

“It’s funny, but between the funny is really earnest, sensitive moments. [ . . . ] It leaves you feeling kind of nice.”

Pashak said the play’s themes will be relatable to those who live in the Pontiac.

”Farming is the heart of the Pontiac, and we have a lot of people who are professionals,” she said. “I think there could be some tensions in families between those different lifestyles.”

She said for her, each character feels familiar.

“Every person I see on stage is a composite of people I know.”

Bastien echoed that feeling. “When we were reading it, it was like, ‘I know these people’. I have friends that have been in this exact situation.”

“The grandfather in the show, some of the style, I swear to God, is picked up off the streets of Shawville. I’ve heard people say, ‘I know this man’,” he said. “It’s everyone’s grandfather in the Pontiac.”

Preparations for the show began in May, and soon after reading through the play everyone involved knew they had something special on their hands.

“On the first read-through with the cast it came to life,” Pashak said. “The line you read on paper was getting out-loud laughs on the first read.”

Both directors agreed the cast, ranging from professional actors to some who haven’t acted since elementary school, has been splendid.

“Seeing them develop their characters on stage and even their confidence has been really nice to watch. It’s been so impressive,” Bastien said.

The rehearsals haven’t been without their challenges, some of which are related to Coronation Hall’s steel roof and lack of ventilation.

“If it’s hot, this building is incredibly, incredibly hot, and if it rains, it’s hard to hear,” Bastien said.

But of the six Pontiac Community Players productions he’s been a part of, Bastien said Having Hope at Home has been the smoothest thus far.

“Last season was a little hectic. We got our rights late, we got our scripts even later, it was an incredibly rushed process,” he recalled. “This year is going so smoothly.”

He also said the actors even found new meaning in the script as they acted it out on stage, particularly between the characters of Michel, the baby’s father, and Dawn, the midwife.

In the script, only Michel is meant to be francophone, but the actor chosen to play Dawn is also from a Franco-Ontarian background, bringing new meaning to the dynamic between those characters.

“We found these two characters who would otherwise have no connection, find a little bit of camaraderie because they are both these outsider francophones.”

The Players are looking forward to inviting the public to see their production, and are especially excited to have it in Coronation Hall, a venue that Bastien said goes perfectly with the play.

“In the play they live in a sketchy little homestead, and so this building fit very well.”

He said they want to give the impression the characters are living in Coronation Hall, and that the audience is invited into their living room.

Pashak said the play was written to take place on a rhubarb farm, but the directors got permission from its author to change the setting to an apple farm, given their venue of choice.

Each attendee will receive a slice of apple pie and a sweet apple cider that they can enjoy while taking in the show.

The play will run from Aug. 21 to 24 at Coronation Hall in Bristol.

Tickets cost $25, and those who wish to purchase them can call 819-647-2547.

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‘Young and young at heart’ at Coronation Hall country dance

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Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Reporter

Two-steppers and square dancers, and even a group of line dancers all the way from Chapeau returned Bristol’s Coronation Hall to its former dance hall glory on Saturday evening, filling the venue for a few hours of good old-fashioned boot-stomping, toe-tapping, do-si-do fun.
To the tune of live music from the Dennis Harrington & Heritage Country band, dancers of all ages took turns prancing across the cleared space in front of the stage.
When the young peewee square dancers from the Shawville 4-H Club took the floor, in traditional square dancing outfits and with 11-year-old member Eloise Thompson calling the steps from the stage, the seasoned dancers admired the younger talent from the tables that lined the perimeter of the room.
And when it was the older generation’s turn up on the dance floor again, the 4-H dancers flooded the hall’s front lawn, taking the opportunity to practice their steps, twirl their skirts, and offer themselves as dinner to the teams of mosquitos that had also shown up for the unofficial season launch party of Coronation Hall.
“This hall, that’s what it should be for,” said Norma Graham, mother to the hall’s owner Greg Graham, and the visionary behind the event. “Never mind anything else, it should host country dances.”
Norma said the Grahams had put on a similar dance night to celebrate Coronation Hall’s 15th anniversary last October, which was the first time the Dennis Harrington & Heritage Country band played at the venue.
She said Harrington was keen to do it again, and that she, who loves the enthusiasm and energy that a square dancing event almost guarantees, did not need convincing.
Greg Graham said the dance hall, built in the 1930s, used to host community dances every Friday night.
“All the young, and young at heart, would come here to dance. And they’d dance dances like this. Every little village and town had a dance hall.”
“The era of the dance halls wrapped up in the 1960s,” Greg said, explaining that the introduction of better cars and better roads meant people discarded their loyalties to the dancehall in their own small village once it became more feasible to attend dances in the region’s bigger towns.
This Bristol dance hall shut down in the 1960s, and remained more or less abandoned until the Graham family reopened it in 2008.

“It feels amazing, it’s got real life to it,” Graham said, describing the thrill of seeing his hall vibrate with the energy of the people who seemed so happy to be there.
4-H dancers celebrate
successful season
Fifteen members of the Shawville 4-H Club’s three square dancing teams had a little extra pep in their step on Saturday evening, thanks to confidence gained after wrapping up another competition season.
Gillian MacDougall, one of the club’s two square dancing coaches, said the members had been practicing once a week since February.
In April, those keen on competing showed off their best moves at the Ormstown Square Dance competition and the Vankleek Hill Fiddle and Dance competition, where many members took home prizes.
“But we’re not just doing it to compete, we’re doing it for social skills. Learning how to dance and adapt to other people, that’s also a skill,” MacDougall emphasized.
For two of the club’s younger members, the prizes were indeed a big part of the fun.
“Me and Elly won first place,” Braylie Bullis told THE EQUITY, taking a break from dancing.
“Twice!” Bullis’ dancing partner Elly Ingalls chimed in, smiling. “It felt good to win.”
Bullis and Ingalls won best peewee couple at the Ormstown competition, where the club’s peewee team, made up of members Elly Ingalls, Braylie Bullis, Beth McCann, Rebecca Stephens, James Stephens, Laurel Sally, Reid Thompson and Eleanor Lafromboise, also placed first in its division.
Eloise Thompson, 11, figured she was likely the youngest caller competing in the junior category at the Ormstown competition, and she, in what was her first year calling, won first place in her division.
“It’s a lot more work than I thought it would be, because you have to memorize the call without the paper,” Thompson said. “And there’s a lot of pressure on the caller before you go up on stage.”
After more than a decade of square dancing with the club, twenty-year-old Amy Sheppard decided she would also try her hand at calling this year, and won best junior caller at the Vankleek Hill competition.
“When I’m talking to the older community they talk about how squaredancers used to dance in high school and I’ve always found that so cool,” Sheppard said, describing part of what has inspired her to stick with dancing all of these years.
“I just thought, ‘Yeah let’s keep it alive.’”

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Warm, dry spring brings bushfires to Bristol, Pontiac

Local Journalism Initiative / / / , , ,

Guillaume Laflamme, LJI Reporter

Firefighters in the municipalities of Bristol and Pontiac responded to a seasonally high number of bushfires in the last week of March and first few days of April, attributable to the unusually warm and dry conditions the region experienced in what has been a relatively early spring.
Mario Allen, director general for the Municipality of Pontiac, said the fire department responded to 10 bushfires over the course of that period, including a fairly large fire that broke out on Cain Line, just off Lac-des-Loups Road.
“We were lucky to have the help of Bristol and La Pêche,” Allen said. “That way we were able to protect the big forest right beside it. Without them we could have ended up losing many acres of forest.”
Allen said firefighters from the three municipalities worked mid-afternoon until 11 p.m. on Apr. 2 to put out the fire that was, at its largest, 4-5 acres large.
Allen said there were also several smaller grass and bush fires that had to be put out in his municipality, many over the Easter long weekend when people cleaning up their yards and burning leaves and old branches lost control of the burn.
“It was quite a few years that we didn’t have so many as we’ve had in the last two weeks,” Allen said, attributing the unusually early fire season to prime conditions created by a lack of precipitation combined with a surplus of dead, dry vegetation covering the ground.
“We were about to send out an advertisement saying no burning but the snow came on Thursday and that solved a lot of the problem.”
Alex Mahon, who has been a firefighter for Bristol for five years and is currently completing his officer course, said the warm spring has forced a running start.
“The first week was pretty full. But last weekend, it was bad for us,” Mahon told THE EQUITY, following the Easter long-weekend, noting the department responded to three bush fires, two in Bristol on Mar. 31, and the big one on Cain Line the following Tuesday.
As a result, the Bristol Fire Department has stopped giving out burn permits and has enacted a burn ban for the municipality due to the dry weather. The department is discouraging people from burning things outside until the conditions improve.
Mahon said the snow last week made a small difference, but did not bring enough moisture for the department to cancel the ban.
“If you look outside now, you never would have even known it snowed,” Mahon said.
“We’re still being very cautious until the grass starts getting greener and the conditions become less dangerous.”
Season’s forecast
Mélanie Morin, information officer for SOPFEU, Quebec’s wildifre prevention agency, explained that the season has been off to an early start with 13 fires in the Outaouais region over the last three weeks that have burnt 6.6 hectares collectively.
“So far there’s been less snow in southern Quebec than there has been in usual years.” Morin said. “So we are ready and expecting […] a more early start to the season.”
Although the weather is dryer than usual, Morin said that the severity of the wildfire season is a challenge, and the most important part is being prepared for any situation.
“Other than a few days out, we can’t see how the season is going to be like. Our main mission is to be ready for no matter the type of season that we get,” Morin explained. “Kind of like every other emergency service, you have to be ready to face all. And then if it’s quiet, all the better. And if it’s not, then we’re there to respond.”
Morin reminded people planning to have outdoor fires to check the fire danger rating, to check in with local municipalities on the requirements for fire permits, and remain cautious with fire use.

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