Published: Jan 31 at 2:23 p.m.
Updated: Jan 31 at 3:32 p.m.
Cheryl Denny can’t say exactly what grade it was that she turned her focus toward art, but she can say why.
“You know, I wasn’t that much into school. I’d doodle,” she said on Thursday Jan. 31 standing in front of a mural. It depicts a sunset over calm waters spanned by a narrow bridge. There’s a small boat cutting a wake through the center of the scene.
Enough to be asked to paint the scene behind her, one which the Pictou Landing First Nation community chose to represent the past and hoped-for future of A’se’k, the Mi'kmaq word for the once tidal estuary next to the PLFN community.
It was a lot of pressure for an artist used to painting eight-by-ten prints.
The number 365 fastened with binder rings to the upper portion of Denny’s scene mark the beginning of a year-long countdown to the legislated closure date of Northern Pulp’s effluent treatment facility on Jan. 31, 2020.
The painting, with its countdown callendar, are on display just outside the PLFN community gymnasium. Nearly 250 people were gathered inside that gym on Thursday to show their determination that the Boat Harbour Act be upheld. Many were wearing red shirts with the words "A’se’k #31 January 2020" written on them.
“That end date is so sacred to us. Fifty-two years that we’ve carried this,” said Chief Andrea Paul to the crowded room. Paul’s speech presented a united front on behalf of the citizens of PLFN that the community will not accept any extensions for Boat Harbour.
“I’m not speaking as Andrea. I speak for all the people. I always say that when I come, I carry every single person from my community with me. If I could carry them all on my back, they would be on my back,” she said.
An hour before the Pictou Landing event was scheduled to start, Northern Pulp held a press conference in Halifax calling for a one-year extension to the 2020 deadline.
However, Premier Stephen McNeil has so far maintained that there will be no extension to the 2020 deadline under the Boat Harbour Act.