Scotiabank announces donation at Purdy Crawdord Centre for the Arts
The Trans Canada Trail (TCT) announced a $500,000 gift from the Bank of Nova Scotia on Oct. 28 to go towards trail development. The announcement was made by Valerie Pringle, co-chair of the Trans Canada Trail Foundation, and was hosted at Mount Allison’s Purdy Crawford Centre for the Arts.
The donation will help fill gaps in the trail, including le Sentier de l’Étoile by the Petitcodiac River where the historic dikes are located, as well as areas of Sackville’s Tantramar Marshes. The $500,000 was complemented by an additional $250,000 from the federal government, and the combined funds will pay for the completion of the section from Dieppe to the Confederation Bridge.
“[Scotiabank is] proud to support the Trans Canada Trail because at Scotiabank, we believe in helping build healthy, vibrant communities,” said Craig Thompson, the Atlantic-region senior vice-president of Scotiabank, in a comment to the Sackville Tribune Post.
The TCT aims to complete the coast-to-coast trail by Canada’s 150th birthday in 2017. The completed trail will be nearly 24,000 km long and accessible for recreational activities such as hiking, skiing and bicycling. The trail is currently 80 per cent complete and includes local highlights such as the Fundy National Park trails, the Dobson Trail, and the Fundy Footpath.
Organizations nationwide have invested time and money into trail completion, which the foundation hopes will bring unity to Canadians from the Pacific to the Atlantic to the North. This summer, volunteers helped build trails in Acadia Park, N.S. Later in the summer, $884,000 were approved by the TCT for use by local partnerships in order to complete the Nova Scotian section of the trail.
