Item

St. Croix Courier

Feb 5/1986

Jeffrey Irwin urges waterfront development in St. Andrews, improvement of Katy's Cove, tourism. . Locals fear threat to privacy, as in proposed boardwalk either side of Market Wharf.

            Willa Walker's piece on history of "Anchorage." Photos. Owned by Robert Gardiner Payne, grandson of RS Gardiner. .

St. Croix Courier

Feb 12/1986

Plans drafts Shiretown development until 1990. Emphasis on tourism; taking up tracks, land behind Passamaquoddy Lodge for Housing.

Daily Gleaner

March 26/1986

In the Hotel Business: So the New Brunswick Government has taken another lurch into the hotel business. So what else is new? It has already been running—after a fashion—the Algonquin Hotel in St. Andrews and if it has shown any profit after years of proprietorship we should like to know of it.

            It has been said that the Algonquin's chief use has been by provincial bureaucrats for entertaining their friends and guests, that the ordinary New Brunswicker could never afford to partake of its numerous amenities. But that is probably unkind. No doubt the hotel has served other purposes of which we have not been told. At any rate, the New Brunswick government is now the proud owner of 70 percent of the share of the new and luxurious Saint John Hilton hotel dominating the waterfront in the Market Square Complex. A Saint John developer, Pat Rocca, had owned 60 percent of the hotel. When the hotel got into trouble, through what Mr. Rocca called "inaccurate financial projects," by Hilton Canada, Inc., he pulled out, making a deal with the province to take 90 percent of his shares for a token $1.

            The taxpayers of New Brunswick may or may not be happy to know they have another hotel besides the Algonquin. It was quite a transaction. As it stands, the province has 70 percent of the shares, plus a $1 million loan guarantee and a $1.7 million investment to cover operating and other losses.

            Mr. Rocca still owns 10 percent, as do the City of Saint John and the Hilton Company. In addition, the city has agreed to defer $222,000 in rent for the hotel and its parking garage.

            All is well—for the bank. All is not well for the taxpayers. The alternative would have been much better. The hotel could have been allowed to go bankrupt. After a suitable period of time, it could have been sold by the receiver and opened up under a new owner. The bank would have lost, to be sure, but the taxpayers would not have been dragged into it.

            The government is broke. There is only one way it can buy hotels—by borrowing. And hotels are the last thing the government needs. Will it ever learn that it cannot go propping up enterprises set to go under? Its third-quarter financial report showed clearly that a large part of its deficit was incurred by bailing out troubled businesses. One can conclude that the government does not read its own balance sheets. Some business sense.

St. Croix Courier

May 7/1986

Colorful Tourism Guide launches summer Season. Tourism Recreation and Heritage Minister Omer Leger. French and English. Full color, magazine style guide. 96 pp. 400,000 copies to go into circulation next month. Design and production by Bell-Hawk Associates, Hawk Communications Studios, Sackville New Brunswick. Message: "There's Plenty to See Besides the Sea."

St. Croix Courier

May 28/1986

Katy's Cove—Town Takes Over Management. "With the agreement of the Algonquin Hotel the Town has decided to assume management of the Katy's Cove swimming area for the rest of the year." Hotel will continue to look after grounds, maintenance, using area for guests and lobster suppers.

St. Croix Courier

May 30/1986

Kay Fisher

Algonquin renovations ready for new season

After undergoing $400,000 in renovations, the Algonquin Hotel is gearing up for a promising season and predicting almost a 10 percent increase in occupancy rates. Hotel Manger Jim Frise says there's a lot of reservation activity originating in the New England States. He attributes it to the unpopularity of Europe vacations in the wake of terrorist activity there, and to some excellent advertising coverage. The Algonquin has recently been featured in double-page ads in Time magazine and the New York times weekend supplement, and Frise says many callers are referring specifically to those ads. June, July and August are looking particularly good.

            An occupancy rate of about 74 percent is expected this year, up from 66 percent last year. Hotel guests are usually 60 percent American but Frise expects a higher number of them this year. One factor which didn't help business in 1985 was 24 days of rain in June. However, by the 1987 season, when the weather turns foul, guests will be able to amuse themselves in the hotel's new health centre. The space which used to be Sir William's Lounge is being used as extra convention space this year, and over the coming winter will be converted to a fitness center with whirlpool, hot tubs, aerobics room, sauna, exercise equipment, and a health food bar.

            "For a resort hotel of our style it's common place to have a facility of this kind," says Frise. This year's list of changes includes the refurbishment of 40 of the hotel's 200 rooms, with the remainder to be similarly redone over the next few years. And for the first time, Algonquin guests will have television and radio in their rooms.

            Frise says over the years they've had many positive comments from guests who may have missed their televisions at first but quickly grew to enjoy having no set to turn on. But last year, 90 percent of the comments from guests remarked on the lack of TV and radio, he explained. The hotel has also closed off the main diningroom, the location for convention banquets, so that the sound of the speeches and other goings-on doesn't spill over into the patio areas. And they have made improvements in staff housing as well.

            The Chart Room downstairs has a new more casual face, and now provides more an alternative to formal dining offered on the main floor. Open from 4 pm to 1 am, Monday to Saturday, the public will have live Maritime sing-along type entertainment. John Gracie is entertaining until the end of May and St. Stephen Irish and folk song man Dave Crag will take up residence in the Chart Room for the month of June. Rick Gautreau will be there for the first two weeks of July. Entertainment is also provided nightly in the library bar near the main lobby.

            Some of the main conventions to be hosted by the Algonquin this summer are the New Brunswick Chartered Accountants, Maine Optometric Association, New Brunswick Automobile Dealers Association, and Master Breweries Association.

St. Croix Courier

June 4/1986

Building an Image—White Paper on tourism coming. St. Andrews member of the business community here are concerned the town is losing its "by-the-sea" flavour and tourist appeal without an accessible, developed waterfront. Ian MacKay wants marina. "The perception of St. Andrews as a wealthy community with patrons, endowments, foundations and funds gives rise to feeling that in many instances the community can find its own way without help," he said. On the north shore marinas are coming out of their ears.

St. Croix Courier

June 11/1986

New Tourist Info Center to pen in Calais in July.

St. Croix Courier

July 2/1986

Photo of Windsor hotel, site of teenage reminiscences by Saint John native Charles Baillie. Glimpse into social scene in 1890s.

            Tourism in first part of 1986 up over last year by 16 percent. Porous border. 1.3 million January-march.

St. Croix Courier

July 9/1986

Is St. Andrews Our "Honeymoon Capital?" Carol-Ann Nicholson

. Saskatchewan bride drove all the way to stay at "fairytale castle."

If you want to make friends or find companionship when you are on a tri or a vacation, get yourself a child and find a motel or a hotel with a swimming pool. In the pool you will find great quantities of children splashing around. But sitting by the pool you find adults, male and female, all anxious to converse.

            It was just such an occasion when I was in Halifax several weeks ago. It was easy to strike up a number of conversation but the one I found most interesting was with a woman from Saskatchewan. "You come from St. Stephen in New Brunswick? Oh how interesting. that is next door to St. Andrews-by-the-sea where I spent my honeymoon and it is a wonderful place," she said while keeping one eye on six girls and two boys in the pool. "When I was a child I saw a picture of the Algonquin Hotel in a brochure," she reminisced, "and decided then and there that I would stay in that fairytale castle after I got married. And that is exactly what we did. We drove all the way from Saskatchewan to New Brunswick and we spent five days in St. Andrews and loved every minute of it.

            By this time there were several other people sitting around in lounge chairs, one eye on the pool and the other on the bride of fifteen years ago. I could tell that they were all mesmerized by the tale of St. Andrews. Afterwards, several asked me the best way to get there and what else they could do in addition to staying at the Algonquin Hotel.

            As all the conversation swirled around me, I began to wonder if St. Andrews-by-the-sea should start billing itself as the honeymoon capital of Canada, the Niagara Falls of the Atlantic Coast. When I got home to Charlotte County I went to the tourist information center and got a brochure to see if anyone else had come up with this brilliant idea, but I could not find any references to such an idea.

            The brochures, mind you, are very colorful and display picturesque scenes of seagull and rock-strewn seashore, but nowhere is there a photo or a mention of a honeymooning couple. "St. Andrews-by-the-sea is not one of your common garden variety resort town," one booklet read. "There are very few neon signs and unless you consider seagull and ocean spray bothersome sounds, noise pollution is unheard of in St. Andrews. Surrounded by the sea on three sides, St. Andrews is one of Canada's unique and special escape town. . . . The tidy streets and sea shores of St. Andrews are lined with some of New Brunswick's oldest and most gracious homes. Quaint painted shop signs along Water Street entice the treasure hunter with hand-woven local tweeds and yearn, Canadian crafts, English chine, curios and antiques."

            Nowhere, however, do they talk about a honeymoon resort, the type of ad that makes Niagara Falls one of the largest tourist meccas in North America. In Halifax, when the travellers gathered around me and I had my money of glory because I come from Charlotte County, I told the people that St. Andrews is one of the loveliest towns along the Atlantic seaboard. I told them that its first settlers were there over 3,000 years ago, when native peoples gathered along the shores of Passamaquoddy Bay to eat fish and shellfish, much as we do today.

            Then we talked of the French who settled in the area and about whom so little is known, and about Champlain and St. Croix Island. "Why did they abandon the Island?" one man wanted to know. Now, there are not many times when I can really impress people, but this was one. Would you believe that I had made some notes on St. Croix Island and had them in my purse? I whipped them out and quoted them from the diary of Marc LesCarbot, one of the men with Champlain and DeMonts in 1604. "For remedies there was none to be found. The poor sick creatures did languish, pining away by little and little for want of sweet meats, as milk or spoon meats for to sustain their stomachs, which could not sustain the hard meats by reason of let, proceeding from a rotten flesh, which grew and over bounded their mouths." The man who asked the question about the Island then bold me he was sorry he had asked, so I quickly switched to the arrival of the Loyalists, to John Hanson and Minister's Island, to Sir William Van Horne, to the Greenock Presbyterian Church which was completed in 1824, and to the Courthouse with its richly gilded Royal Coat of Arms over the portico.

            Another person in my little audience was New Jersey, and she was a military buff. "Haven't you any wars or battles," she inquired? That was when told them that during the war of 1812, five blockhouses, complete with earthen ramparts and muzzle loading cannons commanded the harbour and the entrance to the St. Croix River and that one of these blockhouses still remained. I told them about the golf course, the restaurants, the shopping, the biological station and the Huntsman Marine laboratory and all about the aquarium and the seals, about Sunbury Shores Arts and Nature Center and about whale watching. But it was the bride of fifteen years who stole the show. As we all gathered our offspring to leave the pool, she smiled, shepherded her eight children, and said, "Yes, I did indeed love St. Andrews and think that I will go back for my next honeymoon. I try to have at least one per year."

            It sounds like a wonderful idea.

St. Croix Courier

Aug 27/1986

Tourist Center in Calais "flooded."

St. Croix Courier

Oct 22/1986

St. Stephen Tourist Center to stay open all winter again.

St. Croix Courier

Nov 12/1986

Elderhostel visitors keep Shiretown tourism on the go.

St. Croix Courier

Dec 24/1986

Hibbard House (Sheriff Andrews House) donated to province by Tecolote Foundation in assoc with Vaughn family of St. Andrews. Murray Vaughn died in July, wife Marguerite. Purchased 1984 at public auction. Extensively renovated. province will furnish with period furniture and open in 1987.