The tremendous number of volunteers of all ages, the quality of the signage, the management of the huge number of people attending (often well over 900 vehicles at one time) and the oodles of quality vendors selling or giving away everything from morning coffee, to good old hotdogs to Thai dishes and Samosas.

Overall, though, it was the spirit of the event that was so good, in fact many commented that the Fall Fair at the Ganong Nature Park was the best ever. Insiders point especially to the work of this year’s chairperson of the Fair organizing committee, Colleen Winchester, the former principal of St. Stephen Elementary.

Colleen taught school for 35 years and for 15 more was a vice principal or principal. As such, she knows an impressive number of kids and now, grown-ups, who passed through her school. Not surprisingly, many activities at the Fair were kid-orientated –one face painter spent two full days painting smiling young faces.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has had a rough week, losing another “safe” Liberal seat, this time in Montreal, and seeing the departure of his Quebec Lieutenant Pablo Rodriguez from his cabinet.

The Against the Flow blog has been amply critical of Mr. Trudeau, to the point that a recent column called on the Prime Minister to leave his job.

And yet, the Liberals’ loss of the Verdun seat had been widely expected, as had been the departure of Rodriguez to seek the leadership of the Quebec Liberal Party.

However, it was Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre who lost the most feathers in this tumultuous week in Canadian politics. Despite Mr. Poilievre’s much-vaunted leadership in the public opinion polls and his constant screams of “Axe the Tax”, not one other party leader has announced that his/her party will support Mr. Poilievre’s Motion of Non-Confidence in the government next week.

Despite “Ripping up” the NDP’s Confidence and Supply agreement with the Liberals, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says he will not support Poilievre’s motion. The Conservative leader tried to shame Mr. Singh into precipitating an election by saying that Singh was only propping up the government to ensure that he could collect a big Parliamentary pension this coming February. However, the egg was all over Poilievre’s face when it transpired that his pension would be three times higher than Jagmeet’s at a nifty $200,000 per year.

At last count, 516 local newspapers across Canada, including the Saint Croix Courier, have closed their doors since 2008. As the editor of one of those newspapers describes it, the main cause is simply “social media.”

Yet, there are two local bright stars for the free press despite the depressing avalanche of closures across North America.

CHCO, the courageous and tireless community television station in Saint Andrews, has bought the recently closed Saint Croix Courier, which was founded in 1865, 159 years ago. Through virtually its entire publishing life, The Courier was independently owned and operated, including during the era of the dominant Irving media ownership, and then the current Postmedia control in New Brunswick and much of North America.

Meanwhile The Quoddy Tides newspaper has been publishing twice a month since 1968, covering communities “touched by the tides of Passamaquoddy Bay” on both sides of the border between Canada and the United States. Throughout its 56-year life “The Tides” has been published and edited by its founder Winifred French and, since her death in 1995, by her son, Edward French.

CHCO acknowledges that it is new to the newspaper business, but not new to journalism. In a statement to this blog, Vicki Hogarth, CHCO, expresses it this way: 

Jagmeet Singh, the federal NDP leader announced Sept. 4 that his party has ripped up its confidence and supply agreement with Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.

Singh said: “In the next federal election, Canadians will choose between Pierre Poilievre’s callous cuts or hope.  Hope that when we stand united, we win.  That Canada’s middle class will once again thrive together.”

The NDP leader described the government’s decision to impose binding arbitration to end the dispute between the rail workers and their employers as “a line in the sand that was crossed.”
All this sounds like a pretty weak rationale by the NDP leader.

Embarrassingly for Mr. Singh, it appeared to many that he was doing the bidding of Conservative Leader Poilievre who had just demanded that Singh break the agreement with the Liberals and precipitate what Poilievre hopes will be “The Carbon Tax Election.”

The water has drained out of the Right Honorable Justin Trudeau’s political bathtub, and for the sake of his legacy and the good of the country he should leave without further delay.

Perhaps surprising to some, this truth is clear with the events this week in the most westerly province of the country, British Columbia. Kevin Falcon, head of the BC United Party announced that his neo-liberal party is merging with the far-right Conservative Party of BC, led by John Rustad.

This means that in BC, the move to “Unite the Right” will soon be complete. There are still a lot of complications, such as the two BC parties on the conservative side of the political spectrum now have nominated candidates in the same ridings. That problem will quickly disappear.

People in the U.S.A., Canada and the world can feel more hopeful than they have been for a long time after Kamala Harris’ powerful, compassionate, and visionary speech Thursday night to accept her presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention.

Unlike the recent rambling convention speeches by President Joe Biden and the much-feared Donald Trump, Vice President Harris delivered a concise, and forceful talk. Although she has been criticized for being too “smiley,” Harris was serious, presidential and, unafraid to mix it up with Trump.

American patriotism was alive and well at the lively DNC, and the raucous crowd of freshly-discovering-Kamala-believers was happy to wrap themselves in the Stars and Stripes. “I love my country with all my heart,” Harris asserted.

“The middle class is where I come from,” she said, having been raised mainly by a single Asian immigrant mother “on the flats” of Oakland, California, not the high hills inhabited by the more fortunate in that city.

Many hockey fans would agree with the choice of the new captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs, while others would oppose the selection.  But either way, everyone in the hockey world will sit up and take notice that Auston Matthews is the new Leafs captain.

Afterall, Matthews’ stats in the NHL speak for themselves.  Since joining the league in 2016-17 he has scored 368 goals and has 281 assists. In the 2023-24 year he scored no less than 69 goals. The California-born player is only the second non-Canadian captain of the Leafs (after the Swede, Matt Sundin) in their history.

This writer of Against the Flow blog has been among the sceptics about Matthews.  Back in October of 2023, I reproached him for urging fans in a television ad to “Bet on Yourself”. The comment conjured up memories of Pete Rose, ‘Mister Hustle’ in baseball who has been rightly turned down several times for admission to the baseball Hall of Fame, due to his betting on baseball during his playing and managing career with the Cincinnati Reds.

Two giants in the hammer throw, a very young phenom in the pool, and a gritty soccer team that fought back.

These are some of the highlights from the point of view of the Against the Flow blog on the Paris Olympics.

Nothing attracts attention and kudos like Gold at the Olympics.  Canadian Summer McIntosh won three gold medals and a silver at the Paris Games. She is a wonder at just age 17, and she could well return for still more medals at the next summer Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028. 

Then there were the two hefty hammer throwers, Ethan Katzberg and Camryn Rogers, both world champions, who captured gold medals for Canada in Paris. For Rogers this was Canada’s first gold in a women’s track and field event since 1928. That’s 96 years ago, folks.

And yet, this country’s greatest triumph at these Olympics occurred not in track and field or in the pool but on the soccer pitch.  That was where the women’s soccer team refused to die after the coaching staff’s unacceptable use of drones to spy on opposing teams. The resulting scandal left the entire Canadian Olympic team in France embarrassed and down heartened.

The women’s team was handed a six-point penalty for the drone scandal but overcame that with a win against Columbia.
 
Vanessa Gilles's soccer teammates know her as "the magnet, for her knack of attracting the ball at just the right time. But she truly showed her true character and grit scoring the winning goal in her team’s comeback victory over host France last Sunday. Then, he spoke her mind clearly and with great force:

​"We haven't slept in the last three days. We haven't eaten. We've been crying. Like, I wouldn't say they're ideal performing situations. But we've held each other through it, and we've had absolutely nothing to lose," Gilles said while still standing on the field.                              

    Summer McIntosh with her gold medal in the 200 metre individual medley​

With his bloodied face and clenched fist salute, former President Donald Trump was at the peak of his popularity after surviving the July 13 assassination attempt. This continued with his early call for unity at the unified and well-organized Republican convention in Milwaukee two days later. 

Regretfully, the Trump remake ended very rapidly. This raised fears among many moderate American voters, and many Canadians as well, particularly considering the extremely poor showing by President Joe Biden in the June 27 campaign debate.

But everything in the campaign changed on July 21, when Biden, under pressure from the public and prominent Democrats, pulled out of the race for the Democratic nomination, and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination.

If you drive the rural roads of New Brunswick these days, chances are you will see a lot of orange squares tilted on their sides, looking like diamonds. They have on them the telltale lettering: Construction.

Could it be there is an election in the air? For those who have witnessed a few elections over the years, it will not come as a big surprise that there is a lot of roadwork in these parts in the run-up to an election.

However, when Blaine Higgs successfully ran to became the Premier of New Brunswick in 2018, he talked as though he was a new type of politician. He would do away with old style politics, the way it had always been practiced in the past-- you know, a mickey of rum in exchange for your vote; patronage handed out by the party in power in government hiring.

And, roadwork, lots of roadwork.