Hello everyone! 

I wanted to tell you a bit about my personnel experience on Archibald Lake, show you Dr. Keven Spencer’s impressive video of Archibald Lake and provide you with a link to Dr. Ann Maest’s video which was made here in Nova Scotia back in November 2018. 

Growing up in Sherbrooke my whole life was an experience of an outdoor wonderland.  My generation was really the last to experience this in this special way and I was lucky enough to be immersed in it.  My Mom and Dad owned and operated the Eastern Valley Outfitters in the area which was a successful guiding business for fishing and hunting.  Due to this unique business I ended up spending time in many parts of the St. Mary's Valley. 

One of these places was Archibald Lake!  We would make the trek to the lake with fishing clients year after year in search of the spring May fly and the trout that followed them.  This lake was one of the most frequented by my dad and because of this in turn now its one of my favorite fishing lakes in the valley.  I have spent many days and nights exploring its banks, streams and waters.  It is most certainly a Heritage Lake if any were in our Valley. 

Dr. Hardy Eshbaugh once told me that when his summer home on the Waternish road was first built people came by horse and buggy to get there.  Even at that time when the salmon fishing in the river was not producing they would make the trek to Archibald Lake for world class brook trout fishing. 

I want you to know how culturally significant this lake is to our area, I mean even Babe Ruth fished its outlet years back. 

The Archibald Lake site was identified as a potential protected area in the Province's "12% Review Lands" process, which took place in 2011.  On January 10th our Province announced that Archibald Lake would now be designated a protected Wilderness Area and would go through the consultation period which ends March 9th 2020.  This designation is significant because it literally cuts off the proposed gold mines water supply.  We don’t necessarily feel this will stop the mine from going forward but it is certainly a blow and many blows add up!

Check out Dr. Keven Spencer’s beautiful video of the Lake and his experiences here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYcAFQNciZk&feature=youtu.be

We are all doing a great jog with our responses but if you have not responded yet please do so and if you have please encourage others.  You don’t need much even a brief note saying how important these designations are for our Province.  You can do that here:

protectedareas@novascotia.ca

During November of 2018 Dr. Ann Maest visited NS both Sherbrooke with us at SMRA and Tatamagouch with SuNNS.  Here in St Mary’s we toured the proposed mine site and held meetings at our Interpretive Center.  In Tatamagouch Dr. Maest gave a presentation.  I will leave you with an 8 min YouTube video of that presentation you can find here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSJIlpd1aIU&feature=youtu.be