The Calais Regional Chamber of Commerce was formed on April 12, 1948, under the name “Calais Chamber of Commerce”, with the “Calais Regional Chamber of Commerce” name being adopted at a later date. Currently, this organization operates under the name “St. Croix Valley Chamber of Commerce”. This chamber of commerce is a non-profit association of members of the St. Croix Valley and Calais, ME, area who aim to create a positive business climate in their region. To this end, they provide networking opportunities for its members, act as a united group to represent the interests of the business community, and collaborate with economic development groups and non-profits throughout Maine to plan events, revitalize the community, and share information.

The St. Stephen Area Chamber of Commerce is an association of business people affiliated with the provincial, regional, and national chambers of commerce who aim to improve the business community within the St. Stephen area. Currently, over 150 business and business people in the St. Stephen area are members of this association. The St. Stephen Area Chamber of Commerce offers its members networking opportunities in the form of special events hosted by the association, and local training opportunities in areas such as marketing, social media, and finance. The St. Stephen Area Chamber of Commerce will also partner with other local institutions such as Future St. Stephen and the St. Stephen Business Improvement Area (BIA) to spearhead initiatives to improve the local business environment.

The Fundy Region Development Commission (FRDC) was an economic development agency which aimed to strengthen the economy of Southwestern New Brunswick. Specifically, it covered the Saint John, Kings, and Charlotte Counties. In order to accomplish their mandate, this organization would support business development and expansion through funding initiatives, work with local community colleges to address workforce issues, host events like job fairs, and also maintain databases of economic information about the region.

Although initially this group’s efforts would include all of the Saint John, Kings, and Charlotte Counties, this would change with the establishment of a new economic development centre for the greater Saint John area called Enterprise Saint John in 1998. After this point the FRDC would only focus on rural Saint John County, along with Kings County and Charlotte County. With rural Saint John County mostly comprising of bedroom communities for the city of Saint John, the FRDC decided to create sub-committees in the Charlotte and Kings County regions in order to better focus on the unique strengths and challenges of these two regions.

The FRDC would be dissolved in mid-2002 as part of a government initiative called “Greater Opportunity: New Brunswick’s Prosperity Plan 2002-2012”. It was dissolved to facilitate the creation of the Enterprise System, which would allow communities to have more control over shaping their economic futures by working directly with municipal, provincial, and federal government. FRDC would be replaced by Enterprise Charlotte.

Downtown St. Stephen (DSS) is a non-profit Business Improvement Area (BIA) organization, which aims to encourage and sustain economic growth and enhance the commercial viability of St. Stephen’s non-residential downtown area. Downtown St. Stephen is one of many BIA organizations that were created in New Brunswick after the Provincial Government passed the Business Improvement Areas Act in 1981. This Act gave local municipal councils the authority to establish a BIA, by by-law, when their local business community petitions them to do so. When such a by-law is passed owners of commercial property within the designated BIA form a non-trading corporation to represent the BIA’s interests. BIAs usually encompass the “downtown” area of a municipality.

Once a BIA organization is established, its board of directors can request that the local municipal council impose a levy on all non-residential property within the boundaries of the BIA. Money generated by this levy can be used to establish an operating office, implement promotional campaigns, and undertake improvement and beautification projects within the BIA. St. Stephen’s BIA includes all non-residential property on King Street beginning at the St. Stephen Inn, down Milltown Boulevard to Water Street, including customs, Budd Avenue, and the Waterfront. The Waterfront includes all businesses on the river and wharf area.

The St. Croix Historical Society was formed in 1954 when Josephine Moore, grandniece of Doctor Job Holmes, donated a building belonging to her family known as the Holmes Cottage for the formation of a historic society in Calais, Maine. The Holmes Cottage is located on 527 Main Street in Calais, and was originally built in 1803. It was used as a doctor’s office by Job Holmes from 1846 until his death in 1864, and was also used by two other Calais doctors named Shillomet Whipple and Cyrus Hamlin.

By 1954 this building was in need of a lot of repair, and the newly formed historical society needed to raise funds and memberships from the surrounding area in order to stabilize the building. Once it was completed, this 1803 building was opened as a museum and many local artifacts began to fill it. The St. Croix Historical Society itself was formed with the purpose of preserving, protecting, and promoting the history of Calais, Maine. To these ends, the society operates their museum, publishes quarterly newsletters, sells books and cards that support their goals, and supports local historic districts and monuments such as Whitlock’s Mill Lighthouse.

Initially, response to the historical society’s work and the museum were very positive, but by 1978 memberships had started to dwindle until the society became inactive and the building became unsafe. This would all change with restoration efforts kick-started by Charles B. Livingstone, son of the first president of the St. Croix Historical Society. He had retired to Calais in 1977 and became totally immersed in the idea that the building could be saved. After an $80,000 restoration done by him and a new board of directors with local match funding with Maine State Historic Preservation Commission funds, the building was rehabbed in conformity with state preservation standards.

Enterprise Charlotte is a Community Economic Development Agency (CEDA) created in July 2002. The aim of this agency was to grow Charlotte County’s economy by ensuring the effective communication of government strategies and initiatives to the region, assisting businesses with expansion, human resource issues, productivity, and succession planning, hosting collaborative meetings and events, promoting the region, and providing funding.

Enterprise Charlotte was part of a larger Enterprise System of CEDAs in New Brunswick at the time, of which there were 15 in total that covered every region of New Brunswick. These Enterprise Agencies were coordinated by the government department of Business New Brunswick (BNB), and were given a budget through the Community Economic Development Fund administered by BNB. The CEDAs were created as a part of “Greater Opportunity: New Brunswick’s Prosperity Plan 2002-2012”, with the aim of giving communities in New Brunswick a more active role in shaping their economic futures based off their unique needs and advantages. The Enterprise Agencies would work with the municipal, provincial, and federal governments to facilitate this.

During the fiscal year of April 1, 2011, to March 31, 2012, New Brunswick’s Regional Development Corporation and BNB were amalgamated into the Department of Economic Development in order to streamline their work. During this same fiscal year the Department of Economic Development began the process of opening district and satellite offices all over New Brunswick. The Charlotte County region would fall under the jurisdiction of a satellite office (called a Regional Service Commission) of the Southwest (Saint John) district office. These Regional Service Commissions would perform much of the same duties as the previous Enterprise Agencies, and would ultimately replace them around April 2013.

Doris Ethel Calder (née Patterson) is a resident and historian of the Kingston Peninsula. She was born on November 3rd, 1941, and currently lives in the Patterson family home in Long Reach with her husband, John. Both her mother, Winnifred Ethel Crawford, and her father, George Gordon Patterson, are direct descendants of Loyalist settlers.
Calder is as an authority of local history with a natural gift for storytelling. This disposition can be traced back to her childhood, when she would tell stories to captivated peers in the woodshed behind her school. Much of the rest of her childhood was spent working and playing on the family farm.

After high-school, Calder left the Peninsula for a few years. She graduated from Acadia University in 1963 and received a B.Ed. at the University of New Brunswick the following year. In 1964, she married John Calder. The young couple then embarked on an adventure, hitch-hiking through Europe and Africa, where they worked and explored. When the grand tour came to an end, Doris and John settled in Long Reach, where they have remained ever since, serving as keen-eyed witnesses to patterns of life and their generational transformations.

In addition to being an oral historian, Calder is the author of All Our Born Days: A Lively History of New Brunswick’s Kingston Peninsula (Percheron, 1984). All Our Born Days is the definitive account of life on the Peninsula. This book stems from more than forty-five interviews conducted by Calder, documenting the memories of local residents.

Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Charlotte County Inc. were an agency which aimed to match children from single parent families with adult volunteers who would spend time with them, with the aim of giving children who were potentially facing difficulties in their lives an adult role model. This agency was granted a provisional licence by the national non-profit organization Big Brothers of Canada in November 1986 and formally began operations in April 1987, with its first two matches between adults and children being made in October 1987.

Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Charlotte County Inc. was one of many agencies in Canada at that time which had the name Big Brothers/Big Sisters. The origins of this movement can be traced to New York in 1904. The founder of this movement was a New York court clerk named Ernest Coulter, who had noticed an increase of young boys inside his courtroom. He felt that if boys in New York had more caring adults in their lives they would be more likely to stay out of trouble, so he sought out volunteers among his friends who could spend time lending a hand to these boys. He started with 39 volunteers, who formed the beginning of the Big Brother movement. This movement was officially instituted in 1908, and by 1916 had spread to 96 cities across the United States. A similar Big Sister movement was founded in the United States around this time as well by socially prominent women who were concerned for the welfare of girls.

This movement would soon spread to Canada, beginning in Toronto during 1912-1913. There, the newly appointed first Commissioner of the Toronto Juvenile Courts Reverend L.L. Starr became similarly concerned about the young boys and girls who had been appearing in his court. Having heard of the success of the Big Brothers and Big Sisters movements in the United States, he felt something similar could work in Toronto. A Big Sisters organization was formed in Toronto in September 1912 after Reverend L.L. Starr reached out to the Local Council of Women with his suggestion. This Big Sisters organization initially acted as an extension of the Local Council of Women, but became independent in February 1916. Similarly, a Big Brothers movement began in Toronto in June 1913. This separate group was formed by Eleanor Adams Hunter, who worked in Toronto’s court system. She had similar feelings about the number of young boys in the court system, and had also heard of the success of the Big Brothers and Big Sisters in the United States. She founded a Big Brothers movement in Toronto and acted as their general secretary. This group would be formally organized in September 1913.

The way these two Toronto groups functioned at this time involved having a juvenile court judge release a young person convicted of a minor crime into the care of a volunteer belonging to either the Big Brothers or Big Sisters, both of which initially acted as separate entities. In the following years many other Big Brothers/Big Sisters groups would form in Canada. The Big Brothers of Canada, who had granted Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Charlotte County Inc. their provisional licence, are American in origin. This group was formed during 1963-1964, when a group of Big Brothers associations in Ontario who were governed by the American Big Brothers met in Hamilton to plan a national body. They decided to apply for a national charter under the name “Big Brothers of Canada (BBC)” and act as a non-profit organization. Their charter was signed in December 1964 by the Canadian Secretary of State, formally incorporating them.

In December 1972 Big Brothers of Canada separated from the American Big Brothers group and began to self-govern. Within four years of this split it had begun to spread across Canada, with 110 agencies in total in 1976. By 1986, this group would also spread to Charlotte County through Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Charlotte County Inc. The current Big Brothers/Big Sisters agency of Canada was created in 2001 when three separate groups (Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada, Big Sisters of Canada, and Big Sisters Association of Ontario) merged. Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Charlotte County currently operates today, and is affiliated with the Saint John branch of this organization.

The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan developed a total of 151 training schools across Canada. In November 1940, a half million-dollar contract was awarded to build a facility at Pennfield Ridge, one of three BCATP bases built in New Brunswick.

From July 1941 to May 1942 the station was home to No. 2 Air Navigation School. This school conducted a four-week intensive course on astro-navigation, designed to qualify students for night navigation. During its short existence No.2 ANS graduated 1,365 Air Observers.

After the fall of France, it was decided to move four operational training units (OTUs) from Great Britain to Canada. Once airmen had successfully learned their trade, they were sent to an OTU for operational training on a particular aircraft and for a particular task. No. 34 Operational Training Unit was sent from Greenoch, Scotland to Canada in April 1942. This station was part of No 3 Training Command of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan and the RAF had responsibility for running the base and school. It had Lockheed Venturas, a medium bomber, for the training of four man-crews for Bomber Command. The course for pilots and wireless operators was 12 weeks long; air observers/navigators 8 weeks and air gunners 4 weeks. Each group trained separately at first and in the final stage trained as a crew. It was operational from May 1942 to June 1944. The station experienced a number of difficulties due to serviceability problems with Venturas, persistent fog, and a lack of operationally trained instructors. Despite this 731 airmen graduated with operational experience.

After No.34 OTU closed, it was taken over by the Royal Canadian Air Force on 20 May 1944. This station consisted of an Operational Training Squadron and a Transport Conversion Squadron. A smaller training unit in the form of the Eastern Air Command School of Survival gave an extensive course in survival measures for those heading to the Far East. Sometimes returning veterans from overseas duties were often posted here to finish up their service. The Station closed for the last time 31-October-1945.

Pennfield Ridge grew from a community of 188 people in 1939 to approximately 5,000 in 1942, complete with hospital, theatre, dance hall, sport facilities, and restaurants. After the war, most of the station buildings were dismantled and sold.