Let's Talk Antigonish

10/12/2026

Happy Thanksgiving!

10/10/2026

Antigonish’s Volunteer Firefighters and the Training Centre They Need - Adrian VandeSande, Chief of the Antigonish County Volunteer Fire Department, explains what it takes to keep a community safe and why everything depends on volunteers

https://letstalkantigonish.substack.com/p/antigonishs-volunteer-firefighters

When you call 911, you probably aren’t thinking about how the fire department is structured, how much training the firefighters have had, or whether the person coming to help you has another job to get back to in the morning. You just expect someone to show up who knows what they’re doing.

This week, Justin and Anuj sat down with Adrian VandeSande, Chief of the Antigonish County Volunteer Fire Department, to talk about what happens behind the scenes when that call comes in. They cover the network of fire departments serving Antigonish Town and County, the surprisingly wide range of emergencies firefighters respond to, the challenge of recruiting and training volunteers, and a new training centre being built in Lower South River that could make a significant difference to fire services across the region.

The conversation starts with a simple revelation: these are volunteers. All of them. Even the chief.

Nine Departments, One Community

Justin opens with a confession. He recently had a chimney fire and discovered only when he called for help that he didn’t actually know which fire department served his property. He had assumed it was Four Valleys. It was Antigonish County.

It’s a useful starting point for understanding how the system works. There are nine fire departments serving Antigonish Town and County, each with its own boundaries, equipment, membership and resources. When an emergency falls near a boundary or requires more people and equipment than one department can provide, neighbouring departments respond together.

Adrian describes mutual aid as one of the system’s greatest assets. He gives the example of a structure fire where the roof was too unsafe for firefighters to work on directly. The town’s department brought in its ladder truck to ventilate the roof, allowing the operation to proceed safely.

The departments also meet every three months to coordinate their work. They are separate organizations, but they are not isolated from one another. When a serious call comes in — particularly a highway collision or a situation where someone is trapped in a vehicle — Adrian says he’s often already thinking about which neighbouring department he might need to call.

For residents, the important thing is that the system is designed to get the appropriate help to an emergency, rather than simply sending whichever department happens to be administratively responsible for an address.

The Extraordinary Reality of Volunteer Firefighting

Anuj was surprised to learn just how completely volunteer-based the service is. Adrian confirms that neither he nor the firefighters in his department are paid for their work. He estimates that roughly 95% of Nova Scotia’s firefighters are volunteers.

And this isn’t a casual commitment. Adrian’s department has around 40 members, who must balance emergency calls and training with their jobs, families and other responsibilities. The department is on call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Some incidents are resolved in ten minutes; others can occupy firefighters for eight or nine hours.

The workload also follows the seasons. As temperatures drop and people start lighting their wood stoves and fireplaces, chimney fires become more common. A blocked chimney, an old nest or years of accumulated debris can turn the first fire of the season into an emergency. Snow and ice bring more vehicle collisions.

And fires are only part of the job.

Adrian’s team responds to vehicle crashes requiring extrication, false alarms, people trapped in elevators and even automatic crash notifications from mobile phones. The department also has a medical first responder team that assists Emergency Health Services, handling approximately 20 to 25 such calls a year on top of its other work.

Then there’s traffic control. Firefighters may be called to an emergency late at night and end up staying until morning because they are helping divert traffic around a collision. Adrian says this has become a significant concern: firefighters are there to respond to emergencies, but they can lose hours doing work that stretches beyond their core role.

The sheer variety of the work helps explain why recruiting volunteers is difficult. It isn’t simply a matter of showing up, putting on a uniform and riding in a truck. New members must meet training requirements and demonstrate a sustained commitment to calls, meetings and volunteering.

A Small but Important Request to Drivers

One of the most practical parts of the conversation is Adrian’s reminder about what to do when an emergency vehicle approaches.

Find a safe place to pull over, stop, and let the vehicle pass. If two vehicles are approaching from opposite directions, both should pull over where it is safe to do so, leaving room for the emergency vehicle to get through between them.

And don’t follow the fire truck.

Adrian says firefighters increasingly encounter drivers who film emergency scenes on their phones while passing. Sometimes a driver has one hand on the wheel and their attention on the accident rather than the road ahead. An emergency scene is already dangerous, and distracted drivers create additional risks for everyone there.

Who Becomes a Firefighter?

How do you persuade people to take on a demanding job that pays nothing?

Adrian describes two recruitment routes. The first is a junior firefighter program for young people aged 14 to 18, which his department introduced in the past year. Participants learn skills such as handling hoses, using fire extinguishers and conducting searches, although they do not take part in live-burn exercises. The department has had success bringing some of these young people into full membership when they turn 18.

The second route is through membership drives, which typically produce five to ten applicants. Not everyone makes it through. The biggest obstacle is time: prospective members need to be able to attend training and respond to calls while maintaining their other commitments.

Physical fitness matters for many aspects of the job, but Adrian emphasizes that there are roles for different people. Nobody is forced into a burning building if they aren’t comfortable doing interior firefighting. Members can contribute in other ways, and some develop additional specialties, including medical first response and vehicle extrication.

The conversation also raises the possibility of recruiting more newcomers to Canada. Adrian welcomes their participation but identifies language and communication as important practical considerations. At an emergency scene, conditions can be loud, firefighters wear masks, and instructions are transmitted by radio. Everyone needs to be able to communicate clearly when safety depends on it.

For anyone interested, his advice is straightforward: contact your local fire department, drop by when people are at the station, or get in touch through Facebook and ask about applying.
The Training Problem

This is where the conversation arrives at its central issue.

Becoming a qualified firefighter requires substantial training. Adrian explains that when he completed his Level 1 training 13 years ago, the process took roughly 16 months. He traveled to Pictou every second weekend for practical instruction, then went to Waverley, near Halifax, for a live-burn weekend and the assessments required for certification.

That training qualifies a firefighter to undertake many of the essential tasks of the job, including entering a burning structure to conduct a search or carry out other interior operations. Members may also pursue additional training in medical first response and vehicle extrication.

But certification is only the beginning. Firefighters need to keep practicing. Their departments might respond to only five or six structure fires in a year, which means opportunities to use some of their most important skills in real conditions are limited.

Adrian has recently traveled to Texas for specialized training involving liquefied petroleum gas — the sort of high-pressure fuel hazard that might arise in a serious transport incident. Even after 13 years of firefighting experience, he found the experience eye-opening.

His point is that classroom instruction has limits. You can learn procedures on paper, but there is no substitute for hands-on experience in a controlled environment that reproduces the pressures firefighters may face in a real emergency.

The problem is that access to this kind of training has been difficult, particularly for volunteer departments whose members must fit courses around their working lives and families. Traveling across the province adds time, accommodation costs and other expenses.

And without training, eager recruits can’t always be put to work.
Building a Training Centre in Lower South River

The proposed solution is a new regional training centre on Macquarrie Drive in the Lower South River Industrial Park.

The project has been a long-standing ambition among local firefighters: a place where new members can earn their Level 1 certification and experienced firefighters can continue practicing, without having to travel elsewhere in the province.

The site covers ten acres, of which three have been cleared. The access road, culverts and other civil work have been completed, and a large concrete pad has been poured. Five shipping containers have been acquired to form the basis of a training structure. They will be stacked and engineered into place, with a propane-powered live-burn system installed by a specialist company from Ontario.

This isn’t a plan to improvise a dangerous fire and hope for the best. Adrian describes a controlled system with a control room and temperature monitoring, designed to let firefighters practice in realistic conditions while managing the risks.

The ambitions go beyond basic structural firefighting. The centre is intended to support training in medical first response, vehicle extrication, water and ice rescue, and other specialized skills. It could also host firefighters from across the region, from Pictou County to Cape Breton, allowing departments to train together and share access to facilities.

Adrian hopes the centre will be used during the week as well as on weekends. Volunteer departments often schedule training around their members’ work commitments, leaving weekdays underused. By offering high-angle rescue training and other specialized courses, the facility could also serve companies working in sectors such as wind energy and fuel.

The potential benefits are considerable: better-trained firefighters, more opportunities to practice, reduced travel costs and a shared resource for departments that might otherwise struggle to access this kind of facility.

The Funding Gap

There’s one major obstacle between the vision and the finished centre: money.

Adrian credits the town and county municipalities with providing valuable support, including the county’s contribution of the land. But the project still needs additional fundraising to move forward.

The financial pressures facing volunteer fire departments are considerable even before a regional training centre enters the picture. Adrian points to a new fire truck purchased by his department the previous year at a cost of $800,000. Equipment, training and protective gear are expensive, and the funding available to individual departments doesn’t always cover what is needed.

Protective equipment creates its own challenges. A full set of bunker gear can cost tens of thousands of dollars, and it must be fitted to the individual firefighter. It can’t simply be handed from one member to another whenever someone new joins.

That becomes especially relevant in a university town. Students may be interested in volunteering, but they may leave Antigonish during the summer or move away after graduation. Departments have to consider whether the substantial cost of outfitting a recruit will translate into a sustained contribution to the community.

Adrian is not dismissive of student volunteers. Rather, he is explaining the practical decisions that come with trying to build a dependable volunteer force on limited resources.

The training centre’s core working group is only five or six people, supported by the wider network of local fire chiefs and firefighters. Adrian himself runs a landscaping business, has three children, and is fitting the centre around his regular job and his responsibilities as chief. It is a substantial undertaking for a small group of people who are already giving their time to the community.

The Recruits Waiting on the Sidelines

Perhaps the most striking moment in the episode comes when Adrian explains what the lack of training capacity means for his department right now.

He has seven or eight relatively new members who joined within the previous two years. They are eager to help, but they have not completed their Level 1 training. The fire school in Halifax had been closed, leaving them unable to finish the process required to take on the full range of firefighting duties.

Adrian describes having to hold these enthusiastic recruits back because they aren’t yet qualified to do the work.

His question to the province is pointed: how long can a department keep promising people that they’ll soon be able to serve?

A local training centre could remove a major barrier. Instead of spending weekends traveling to distant facilities, recruits could train close to home. Existing firefighters could return regularly to practice. And departments across the region could share a resource designed around their needs.

Justin asks whether the result would be a safer community. Adrian’s answer is unequivocal: absolutely.

When someone calls 911, he says, they are probably having one of the worst days of their life. They expect the firefighters who arrive to know what to do. Making sure they have the training and experience to meet that expectation is the entire point of the project.

What Comes Next?

The centre is still under construction, and Adrian is clear that fundraising will determine how quickly it can move forward. In the conversation, he suggests that a major contribution — half a million dollars, for example — could make a dramatic difference to the timeline, potentially allowing training to begin by August of the following year.

That’s a scenario rather than a confirmed opening date. The project still needs the resources to complete the work and establish the staffing and operational arrangements that a facility of this kind requires.

Adrian anticipates that running the centre will eventually require at least a couple of full-time positions to manage the site, maintain the grounds, coordinate courses and ensure that inspections and safety requirements are met.

For now, the project rests on a small group of people trying to build something that could benefit a much larger region.

The conversation is a reminder that rural emergency services depend on much more than the trucks we see on the road. They depend on volunteers who answer pagers in the middle of the night, the training that allows them to do difficult work safely, the equipment that makes that work possible, and the community’s willingness to support all three.

Adrian and his colleagues are trying to create a place where firefighters can train together, improve their skills and be better prepared for the day someone needs them. The goal is simple enough: when the call comes, the people who show up will be ready.

Antigonish Area Fire & Rescue Training Centre: https://www.facebook.com/p/Antigonish-Area-Fire-Rescue-Training-Centre-61583826175860/

Antigonish County Volunteer Fire Department: https://www.facebook.com/ACVFD85/

Adrian VandeSande, Chief of the Antigonish County Volunteer Fire Department, explains what it takes to keep a community safe and why everything depends on volunteers

09/26/2026

What we have learned about Antigonish, podcasting, and journalism - Anuj and Justin recap lessons learned from the past 32 episodes of Let’s Talk Antigonish

https://letstalkantigonish.substack.com/p/what-we-have-learned-about-antigonish

Justin and Anuj sat down for a frank discussion about the Let’s Talk Antigonish podcast; what lessons have been leaned about life in this town, the benefits and limitations of podcasting, and what their hopes are for the future of both Antigonish and the podcast itself.

The Public Face Problem

Justin’s first observation is something he hadn’t fully anticipated when they started: most of the people they interview are representing an organization, and that shapes, and often limits, what they can say. The mayor, the warden, the MLA, the MP, the ER doctors, the heads of arts organizations and businesses; all of them come in with a public face and have to stick to talking points to some extent. They represent employers, electorates, and institutions, so they can’t just say whatever they think.

This isn’t a complaint about any particular guest. It’s an observation about the structural constraint the podcast keeps running into. Academics like Jim Bickerton and Doug Brown can speak more freely because, as academics, they are somewhat freer to speak their mind. Someone employed by Nova Scotia Health cannot come on and rail against their colleagues or employer, and it would be wrong to expect them to. But it means listeners are not always getting the full picture. Justin and Anuj are both aware of this and have accepted it as part of the format they’ve chosen, which is conversation, not interrogation.

Anuj makes a hypothesis: guests who are willing to be self-critical and self-reflective—the ones who stray from formal talking points—are the ones audiences respond to most warmly. Not because they say raw, unhinged things, but because the honesty reads as trust.

Favourite Moments

Anuj’s most memorable episode: the Filipino Association. Not just because it was a chance to discuss their amazing performance at the Highland Games parade, but because of what Cheryl revealed about the internal life of that community; how it functions, how it looks after newcomers, how deeply grateful it is to be here. What struck him was how little complaint there was. A community of over 200 people, working multiple jobs, navigating a country not their own, and what came through was warmth and gratitude. He didn’t know that community existed before the parade. Neither did Justin.

That leads to a broader point Justin raises: there are almost certainly dozens of communities like that in this town; groups of people doing significant things that you’d never bump into unless you you are already part of the community. The podcast has surfaced a few. There are more still waiting to be found!

The other episode that comes up: Trevor Gould at Paqtnkek. Anuj describes the moment he still thinks about when Trevor said: I feel like I have a place in town now. I feel visible.

The Sisters of St. Martha’s episode is the one Anuj keeps coming back to. Sister Joanne was, he says, self-reflective and candid in a way he had not expected. The depth of what the Sisters have contributed to this community—as caregivers, as advocates, as people who quietly pushed against institutional power even within their own church—was something neither of them had fully understood before. And the Sisters, as Justin notes, rarely toot their own horn. They just do the work.

The Gaps

Justin admits that the podcast reflects his interests more than it should. He’s in the arts, so the podcast has done a lot of arts episodes. It’s not a problem exactly as all of it is genuinely interesting, but sports is enormous in this town and the podcast has barely touched it. Hockey hasn’t come up once. The Riverside Racetrack is on the list but the personal relationship to make it happen isn’t there yet.

The daycare issue is another one they’ve been trying to crack for months. The problem is exactly the one identified earlier: everyone who knows the daycare system well is employed within it, which constrains what they can say publicly.

Coming down the pipe: Senator PJ Prosper! The mosque, which has renovated and rebuilt its space from the inside. StFX President Andy Hakin, who has has agreed to come in, though scheduling someone running a university is its own challenge.

The No-Vision Observation

The conversation turned toward something Justin noticed while working through his list: there is no collective vision for what Antigonish is trying to become. The tourism board has a direction. The town and county provide infrastructure, but less direction. Individual organizations build what they need. Projects happen; affordable housing units, the new RK facility, a possible arts centre, the Women’s Resource Centre planning a new building, L’Arche building new space, but they’re parallel tracks, not a coordinated plan. Nobody is standing at the front of the room saying: this is where we are going, and here is how everything we do fits into that.

Anuj frames it as the absence of a collective imagination. Individual vision exists everywhere. A shared vision for the whole community is harder to find.

When pressed, Justin’s hasty example is Canso: Spaceport Nova Scotia gives it an identity and a driver. Orlando has Disney. Sometimes a single massive anchor reshapes what a place is for. Antigonish already has two anchors, the hospital and the university, but has perhaps taken them for granted so that neither functions as an anchor for a unified vision these days. Off -the-cuff ideas are bandied about, including the idea that the town could focus on building to attract families and be known as the ideal place in Canada to raise children. Anuj suggests the town might also lean into being a genuinely elder-friendly destination, given that over 25% of the population is now over 65.

Neither of them is proposing a solution. They’re noticing a pattern across 32 conversations. Whether the absence of a single vision is a problem or just a feature of a community where, as Anuj puts it, a thousand flowers bloom is an open question.

What they both agree on: on the day they record this episode, there’s a food truck rally down at Columbus Field and a film festival at Immaculata happening simultaneously. Justin is planning to attend both. It is, he says, hard to be bored in this town. Perhaps the lack of a single vision and diversity of ideas is part of the town’s charm?

The Podcast Itself

Justin is honest about how this thing actually works. He does all the recording, editing, and social media posting. It runs about three to four hours of work a week on a good week. The hardest part isn’t the recording or editing, but the scheduling of guests; the constant feast-or-famine rhythm where three guests are ready the week you don’t need them and nobody is confirmed for the Saturday that’s coming.

Neither Anuj or Justin have yet to pay themselves for the podcast. The money earned from subscribers and sponsors is being saved to help pay for guest content creators. They have two community sponsors, Whidden Park Campground and HARP, The People’s Press, whose support they are genuinely grateful for. And there’s a growing list of paid Substack subscribers whose contributions paid for audio equipment and will help fund future expansion. Even if the podcast never earns enough to pay its hosts, they’ll keep going either way, so fear not! A special episode is coming, assembled by host Anne Simpson and editor Jeanmichel Cote, which will be something a little different from the usual format. This is the kind of special content they want to see more of from guest contributors.

The request to the audience: write in. With ideas, with feedback, with suggestions. Some of the best adjustments to the podcast—including the longer written episode summaries that now accompany each episode—came directly from listener notes. The rare complaints, Justin says, have on the whole been quite useful. Praise is also welcome, of course!

Listen now (39 mins) | Anuj and Justin recap lessons learned from the past 32 episodes of Let’s Talk Antigonish

09/19/2026

The little place that reads - Dolly Parton’s connection to Antigonish through the Antigonish Imagination Library

https://letstalkantigonish.substack.com/p/the-little-place-that-reads

Anuj is back, and to mark the occasion, Justin and Anuj sit down with Kathleen Robertsson, president of the ABC for Kids Society, to talk about the Dolly Parton Imagination Library and why Antigonish is being cited nationally as a model for how this program can work.

What Is the ABC for Kids Society?

The ABC for Kids Society is the local organization behind Antigonish’s Dolly Parton Imagination Library program. Its mission is wonderfully simple: make sure every child in Antigonish Town and County has access to books from birth to age five.

Through the program, every registered child receives one free, carefully selected book every month, mailed directly to their home and addressed to them by name. The ABC for Kids Society’s job is to make that possible locally, raising the money needed to cover the community’s share of the books and building the partnerships that have allowed the program to reach an extraordinary 80% of eligible children in Antigonish.

The books themselves come through Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which handles the selection, printing, and mailing. The local society never has to buy, store or distribute the books. Its role is community building: fundraising, outreach, partnerships, and making sure families know the program exists.

And Antigonish has taken that role seriously. What began with a few people around a kitchen table has grown, in just three years, into one of the most closely watched local Imagination Library programs in Canada, earning the town a nickname that captures the whole idea: the little place that reads.

Who Is Kathleen Robertsson?

Kathleen is from Antigonish; her father was Henry Sullivan of Henry’s Barbershop, which will ring a bell for anyone who’s been here long enough. Like many Nova Scotians, she spent a significant chunk of her working life in Alberta, teaching in Fort McMurray.

She retired back home with a plan. In Fort McMurray, her friend Julianne sat on the Dolly Parton Imagination Library’s blue ribbon book selection committee. They talked about the program often. Kathleen told Julianne that when she retired to Antigonish, she would try to start it there.

She meant it.

In April 2023, Kathleen sat down at a kitchen table with some friends and asked: would you help? They said yes, and the ABC for Kids Society was born.

What the Program Actually Is

The premise is simple. From birth to age five, every registered child receives one free book per month, mailed directly to their home. The book is addressed to the child by name.

There is no catch, no free trial that converts into a subscription, no hidden cost to families. Kathleen says she still has to convince people of this because their first instinct is that it’s too good to be true.

Dolly Parton’s organization handles all the logistics: the book selection, the printing and the mailing directly to the child’s mailbox. The local society doesn’t touch a single book. What it does is raise $3.85 per book per child per month—$46.20 per child per year—to cover its share of the cost.

Everything else is funded by The Dollywood Foundation.

The books are not secondhand selections or publisher leftovers. They are properly curated, beautiful books selected annually by a blue ribbon committee that convenes in Tennessee for five days, scouring hundreds of titles for books that address character development, language, numeracy, imagination and age-appropriateness.

And the selection committee isn’t simply a room full of PR people or publishing executives. It includes bookstore owners, psychologists, and elementary teachers. Canadians are represented, too. Kathleen has been, as Julianne’s guest, to that gathering herself.

Occasionally a Nova Scotian author will make the list. One of those is Freddie the Flyer, about the first Indigenous pilot, written by Halifax-based author Danielle Metcalfe-Chenaila.

The Numbers

There are 815 children between birth and five years old in Antigonish, according to the census. Kathleen’s program currently serves 650 of them.

That’s an 80% enrollment rate.

The national target for a program like this is considered to be around 65%. Antigonish blew past that. Jan, who heads the national Canadian operation, mentions Antigonish regularly. The program has attracted attention across the country.

Why 80% Matters

This is not a program designed only for families who can’t afford books. Kathleen is emphatic about this.

The goal is a shared foundational experience; a common library of books that children arrive at primary school having read. Teachers at the pre-primary and primary levels have told her it is making a tangible difference. Kids come in with shared language, shared stories, and shared points of reference.

The program reaches the whole community, including families out in Tracadie, Arisaig and Havre Boucher who don’t need to drive into town and spend gas money to put books in their children’s hands.

The books come to the mailbox. And the name on the label matters enormously. Kathleen tells a story about a three-year-old named Luke from Pomquet who runs in from the mailbox each month holding his book to his heart, pointing at the label and spelling it out: L-U-K-E. “That’s me. This book is for me.”

That moment—a small child learning that someone out there knew his name and sent him something—is what Dolly Parton designed the whole program around. She understood, Kathleen says, that what you need a child to feel is that someone, somewhere, cares about them, regardless of what’s going on in their life.

Dolly

The program started in 1995. Dolly Parton’s father was illiterate, and she wanted to give him a gift. She decided to give free books to all the children in her home county of Sevier County, Tennessee.

Her father loved the gift.

The program grew from one county to the whole state, and from one state to the entire United States, and then to Canada and beyond. Today the Imagination Library mails out three million books per month to children worldwide.

Kathleen notes that this makes it bigger than both Walmart and Amazon by certain logistical measures. The whole operation runs out of a small office above a bank back in Sevier.

Dolly once said she wanted to be remembered not for her looks, but for her books. She ran the whole thing on this principle: she put in her own money, she found people who loved children and loved books rather than people who were good at corporate PR, and she insisted that every community do its own part — the shared partnership model that means the program can scale without becoming top-heavy.

How Antigonish Did It

Perhaps unsurprising, it was easy for Kathleen to get the idea off the ground in Antigonish. Most community orgs she approached said yes to the idea right away. The Kinsmen. The Town. The County. The Sisters of St. Martha’s. 98.9 XFM. The Monsieur Hugh McPherson Council of the Knights of Columbus. The Antigonish Lions Club, which runs a full breakfast fundraiser every year. The 100 Women Who Care.

And StFX, where Professor Mark McIsaac’s fourth-year business class—which Kathleen calls Team X—met with her six times over the course of a year to help build out the society’s social media presence and financial infrastructure.

That last piece, Kathleen says, is part of why Antigonish grew so fast. The students were phenomenal. They helped professionalize an organization that started at a kitchen table and turned it into one of the most recognized programs in the country within three years.

Dolly Day: September 25th

To mark Dolly Parton’s passing and celebrate what the Imagination Library has meant to this community, the Town of Antigonish has proclaimed September 25th Dolly Day. (Nine-Two-Five)

The ABC for Kids Society is inviting everyone to sparkle it up a little — wear something pink, something glittery, play a Dolly tune, bake a batch of Dolly Cookies, and give your staff a cup of ambition (rather than your boss).

If you want to donate, you can find the org’s page on CanadaHelps at this link: https://www.canadahelps.org/en/charities/antigonish-imagination-library/

A gift of $9.25 covers two months for one child. You get a tax receipt. Boom, boom, it’s done, in Kathleen’s words.

And if you have a child between birth and five in Antigonish Town or County and they’re not yet enrolled, that is easily fixed. Just visit this link to register:

https://antigonishimaginationlibrary.com/

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Thanks to Whidden Park Campground and Healing Arts Reconciling People (HARP): The People’s Press, Community Sponsors of the Let’s Talk Antigonish Podcast.

Dolly Parton’s connection to Antigonish through the Antigonish Imagination Library