Spring Garden Festival of Artists
Here is the place where it all began. 212 St. Andrew St. is a modest old building which had once been home to several generations of a local Bathurst family.
It might be interesting to tell their story but I don’t know it very well. All I do know is that the back apartment, now gone, was the home studio of a piano teacher. I don’t know his name. That was before my time, more than seventy some years ago as I understand.
The last member of the family sold the home in the late seventies and the building was transformed into a music store.
Chaleur Bay
Spring Garden Festival
BIEN Venue d’ ART
It took creativity and courage to open a music store. It took perseverance to keep it going for over forty years. It took a failing economy to shut it down.
One door closed and another one opened. The former music store became an art centre, a small one with a big vision. The Spring Garden of Artists of Chaleur Bay was born.
Fate again intervened. The fledgling art centre lost its home in the former music store. The Spring Garden Festival became little more than a dream in the mind of one artist.
The Music City Story
Music City was a music store in Bathurst NB, locally owned and operated by Musk Enterprises Ltd. It was located at 212 Saint Andrew Street, directly across from the Bathurst Curling Club.
Musk Enterprises Limited was formed in Bathurst NB by three local Bathurst musicians who were members of ‘Musk Band’, a rock group popular throughout the Acadian Peninsula.
Musk members built and operated a recording studio in Dunlop as well as the ‘Music City’ store in Downtown Bathurst.
Two of the members eventually left the partnership and Gilles Olscamp became sole owner of ‘Musk Enterprises’ and ‘Music City’
No small business can survive in a failing economy. No city can flourish when its major industries close down.
Bathurst had been a flourishing community in Gloucester County, NB, Canada during the sixties and seventies. Then the two major local industries shut their doors.
For Bathurst these industries were ‘The Mill’ and ‘The Mines’.
The Bathurst Story – The Mill
The Mill, also locally known as the ‘Pulp and Paper Mill’ had been in operation here for almost a hundred years. The owners even built a dam on the Nepisiguit river to serve as their own source of power.
The Mill in Bathurst was the original home of the Bathurst Container. Then the Mill was known as Bathurst Power and Paper
Nearly every family in Gloucester County had a connection to the mill. Many of these families had supplied the mill with generations of workers. Others operated small and medium sized businesses to supply the needs of all these workers and their families.
When the mill closed Bathurst suffered the pain. The scars of that closure are still to be seen at the end of Main Street in Bathurst.
Few small businesses were unaffected by the closure of “Smurit-Stone” as it was by then known.
Many ‘Music City’ customers had worked at the mill.
The Bathurst Story – The Mines
The Bathurst Mining Camp became a legend during the fifties. It was well-known, even on Toronto’s Bay Street. Claim-stakers flocked here from all over, hoping to strike it rich. And some did.
By the time the sixties rolled around Noranda had built a mine near Bathurst, ‘Brunswick Mining and Smelting’. I use the word ‘built here in the modern sense of building a business. The mine was already here and Irving was a 30% shareholder when Noranda moved in. But that is another story. The fact is, we locals could lay claim to our backyard having the largest zinc mine in the world. The economic boom in Bathurst had begun.
Young people no longer had to leave their families and go away to find jobs and education. A bilingual community college existed here at the time, offering training in up-grading and trades. Another interesting story involving power politics, that. In any case, ‘the mines’ was hiring.
The mine was also bringing new knowledge and arts into the community. It sponsored a wide variety of sports and artistic events.
Then ‘the mines’ closed down. Former mine employees were no longer able to live and work in Bathurst.
People moved away and without these customers more local businesses failed and shut down.
Chaleur Bay
Spring Garden
of Artists 2014-2024
Holding Space for Chaleur Artists
Holding Space for Chaleur Garden of Artists
Holding Space for Your Story
Chaleur Bay Spring Garden Artist
OtherWorld Collection
The OtherWorld collection was a group of acrylic paintings that formed part of the Artist’s “Don’t Forget You’re Irish” exhibit and residency at the AMDHHA Doucet-Hennessy House in Bathurst during July of 2018.
Artist in residence was Margaret Sharon Olscamp of Dunlop. This collection of paintings was shown a few years later at the BIEN-Venue art space on St.Andrew Street in Bathurst.
BIEN-Venue-d’Art
Art Installations were an on-going feature of the BIEN-Venue art space both inside the building and outside. Themes changed and media ranged from window displays to fabric sculpture to land sculpture and beyond.
Display space was offered to other artists who wished to share the space. Many free cups of tea were poured and shared in this space.
New arrivals
Teach them to navigate, to live creativity and to value courage and empathy.
What does anyone ever say?
“At least she tried”
Teach them and they will survive.
Chaleur Bay Spring Garden of Artists
/a creation of artist Margaret Sharon Olscamp
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The Beautiful Bay
Chaleur Bay – Baie de Chaleur
Located along the shores of Chaleur Bay, Our bay is also known by many locals as Baie de Chaleur, close to the original name given to it by Jacques Cartier.
This beautiful bay is shared equally by New Brunswick and Quebec.
Every summer for many years a fleet of dorries has held a friendly race across the Bay from Quebec to New Brunswick while friends and families gather from the crack of dawn to watch from the banks near the Quai in Petite Rocher and cheer them on. Some of the more seasoned even build their own boats. This annual festive occasion is a true home-grown down-east event.
One summer an International Catamaran meet was held in Nepisiguit Bay. The boats, as well as the men and women who sailed them nestled at night all along the Youghall beach public section just outside of Bathurst Harbour and across from the Bathurst Marina. It was a beautiful and colourful scene which many of the senior residents of Bathurst may remember.
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Maggie Quinn Art - Spring Garden of Artists on Chaleur Bay 