Maggie Quinn Art – Spring Garden of Artists on Chaleur Bay

by Margaret Sharon Olscamp Dunlop NB Sunday June 9 2024

There is only one me. Margaret Sharon Hennessy is the name I was given just after I was born. I don’t know who suggested that I be given the first and middle names Margaret Sharon. My father wasn’t around. He was off somewhere in the Canadian Air Force, possibly Ottawa. I know he worked there. Did my mother name me? I don’t know that she was around very long after I was born. My grandmother took me home is what I was told by my mother years later. So it is possible that my grandmother named me, Margaret after her sister and Sharon … why Sharon? Again, even more years later I asked my mother. It was a holy name is what she told me. Now my mother was in no way religious. Sure, she belonged to the usual women’s church group at the local parish. She worked diligently to raise money to build a spanking new church after the bulldozer leveled the lovely old historic building where she and my father had been married and where I was baptized and where I was conditioned into those first years of being a good little girl who obeyed the commandments.

My grandmother, on the other hand was deeply religious, so much so that she had me studying catechism before I ever went to school.

So how did I get onto this subject. Well it’s like this. I keep running into the confusion of names. For example, Bathurst is the name of the town where I was born nearly eighty years ago. The same Bathurst is the closest centre to what was once the largest zinc mine in the world. That same particular Bathurst usually comes followed by the initials N.B., standing for New Brunswick, a Canadian province on the east coast of the country called Canada.

There is another Bathurst. That once is located halfway around the world in the country called Australia. The specific region where it is located is called New South Wales. I’m not sure whether that is a province or a county or a state or something else. In any case, Bathurst NB is not Bathurst NSW.

There was a time many years ago when they were somewhat connected. They were called twin cities. I’m not sure what that means exactly. I think it’s a political reason for mayors to visit each other but I can’t be sure. Somewhere along the way politics changed, the New South Wales Australia Bathurst was dropped and some place in France became the new BFF (best friend forever) of Bathurst New Brunswick.

Coincidentally, along the way, we also lost our zinc mine, our mill, a number of local businesses and many of the government agencies began to offer fewer and fewer services in the English language in our particular region of the province.

So why is this any of my business? Well our Province has been lauded for being the only bilingual province in Canada. The reality is that while bilingualism was first introduced and supported as a way to attain equality for all citizens of this province, it hasn’t worked. In the beginning it worked well when there was something called simultaneous translation services offered at public meetings. That no longer happens. Either you go to a French meeting or an English meeting. The province is split like it never was before. I don’t know what it’s like elsewhere. Hereabouts if you want information or services in English you’d better be ready to beg. That’s not the sort of bilingualism I supported when it was introduced decades ago.