Having been one of the many victims of flooding in 2019 and now being faced with the enduring impacts of the 2020-2021 COVID-19 pandemic, the Municipality of Campbell’s Bay hasn’t had it easy over the last four years.
Heading into Quebec’s municipal election season in 2017, then-councillor and current Mayor Maurice Beauregard identified several areas of focus as he prepared to run for mayor. Those areas of focus were: attracting and retaining youth and families to live and stay in the community, and improving local infrastructure.
However, Beauregard didn’t foresee that the past four years would play out in the way that they have.
“I’ve had bad luck on my run,” Beauregard said.
“With the flood we lost a few houses, that same year we lost a house [to] a fire that had three apartments in it,” he added. “So since then we’re trying to rebuild, we have a few projects [ongoing] in Campbell’s Bay.”
Working on the attraction and retention of people who would otherwise leave has remained the main focus despite the various challenges, and the Downtown Core Vision Plan that kicked off in 2016 has been a key part of that focus.
The municipality began its first phase of the plan that year with the installation of the mural display on Front Street, which is a representation of how the community would have looked during the 1950s. The Mural Park was officially unveiled during the 2017 summer festival.
In August of 2020, the municipality wrapped up its construction of the RA splash pad and held its grand opening to great success. The opening ceremony drew nearly 100 residents and Pontiac’s elected officials to celebrate the second phase of the plan, which has been spurred along by the municipality’s ability to rally the community for fundraising and mine for grant funding.
Phase three is planned for this summer, and Beauregard said they have already secured over $200,000 in funding over the past several months to help with it. It will include a new play structure for kids, and a lighted walking path going through the RA grounds.
“We’re trying to do a lot, but we’re trying to do a lot without touching the town’s money,” Beauregard explained.
Councillor Tim Ferrigan said that while the pandemic has now caused the 2020 and 2021 summer festivals to be cancelled, over $100,000 was raised over the course of the previous five years of festivals to help fund the projects that have been completed since then.
“The one thing that I think has helped us achieve the things that we wanted to achieve is the community,” he said. “I think they’ve appreciated seeing some of the projects we’ve accomplished and they know that they’ve taken a big part of it.”
Director General Sarah Bertrand, who has been with the municipality since 2013, told THE EQUITY in an email that the town’s major accomplishments have been spurred along while remaining economical as a municipality.
“This allows our town to advance while keeping the tax burden low on its residents,” Bertrand wrote.
She added that it’s not just securing grants that make things possible, but also the fundraising will of local residents.
“The dedication of community volunteers during multiple fundraising events promotes community pride and definitely demonstrates the will of a small rural town.”
Aside from continued work on the downtown plan, the municipality was also able to complete a grant-funded rehabilitation program of the municipal wharf system that started nearly 10 years ago, the replacement of lighting on the ball field and the installation of a new roof over the bleachers.
Having to turn to alternative routes for raising funds for downtown projects is largely due to key infrastructure work making up the lion’s share of the municipal budget.
“Everybody knows, A small town with water and sewer doesn’t have a whole lot of extra funds to play with,” Beauregard noted.
One of the most notable infrastructure projects was the rehabilitation of the wastewater treatment plant, wherein “the municipality was able to overhaul the treatment plant by keeping the existing technology that is energy efficient and cost effective,” according to Bertrand.
Other key completions were the replacement of a faulty water line section on Front Street, and the installation of a circulation loop for the potable water distribution system.
Since the pandemic began, work on infrastructure was still able to be accomplished, though Beauregard noted it has impacted everything.
“Every project is slow because it’s just finding contractors, but I do believe if council looks right now we can find some funding,” he said. “We have found funding for this summer, we have a bunch of projects on the go. We have seven projects total.”
Ferrigan said one of the council’s biggest keys to success was taking on projects while still remaining mindful of potential real-time challenges, like the flooding and pandemic.
“Building playgrounds and everything else, it’s not the priority in that moment,” he said. “So we deal with that situation when it’s put in front of us, our councillors got involved, our town workers got involved, our townspeople got involved. You know we were down there filling sandbags and the citizens got involved and you just do what you have to help your people around.”
“I think we’ve done a really good job, one year at a time, one project at a time, not getting involved with too many things at the same time,” Ferrigan added.
Although the pandemic has had its clear drawbacks, Beauregard said that it has come with its own benefits.
“I think the only thing that’s helped to retain people is a lot of our Pontiac people are working at home when they had to travel to the city [before],” he said.
“As much as the pandemic’s been terrible, it’s been good for that aspect in keeping people in the Pontiac. That’s a point that we don’t think about often.”
Recent additions to the municipality’s businesses such as Les Viandes Butcherboys on Front Street make Beauregard hopeful despite the damage businesses have incurred over the past year.
“The thing is right now, whether we like it or not, it’s the government shutting all the small businesses, that’s what’s killing us right now,” he said. “The small businesses that we have, it’s going to be hard to retain them through this.”
While the 2020 summer festival was cancelled due to COVID restrictions, the 2021 one will be cancelled due to the RA Centre being occupied by the CISSSO for the COVID vaccination campaign.
Ferrigan said it was unfortunate to have the festival cancelled, but both he and Beauregard said that it was important for Campbell’s Bay as the centre of the Pontiac to use one of its facilities to host the vaccination process.
The municipality still has some key projects upcoming heading into this year’s municipal elections in November: Beauregard said that Maison des Jeunes should be announcing the opening of their new family center in the town sometime in March as part of its partnership with Campbell’s Bay, a more comprehensive plan that would be catered to seniors as part of its continued revitalization of the downtown area, and another future announcement that he said will be exciting for Pontiac youth, although he didn’t want to provide specifics.
With Ferrigan coming up on the end of his third term as councillor, he said he knows that Campbell’s Bay has a good thing going.
“I have zero complaints over the last four years, the community has been together, the council has been together.”
