Editorial

September 2 2026

Taking our turn

One hundred and sixty years is a long time for anything to last.

This week, the Eastern Nova Scotia Exhibition marks that milestone in Antigonish, opening another fall fair built around livestock, agriculture, competition, food, family and the familiar parade of people who somehow find the hours to make all of it happen.

There is nothing automatic about that kind of longevity.

Having big, beautiful buildings helps. But big, beautiful buildings don’t open their own gates, coach 4-H teams, judge cattle, bake pies, organize sales, teach children how to plane a board or sow a row, or stay late to clean up after everybody goes home.

And looking across this week’s Journal, it is striking how often that same simple fact keeps appearing.

Jerome McCarron has spent much of his 80 years in agriculture. His name now belongs to the new pavilion at the exhibition grounds, but his deeper legacy is harder to put on a sign. He learned from others and passed what he knew to younger people through 4-H.

His daughter Amy Fleming credits 4-H with teaching her confidence, communication and leadership – lessons she now carries as president and CEO of Mazda Canada Inc.

Elsewhere, Quinn MacDonald turned 4-H skills into a home-based cake business. Ella MacDonald sees her farm and 4-H experience leading toward veterinary medicine. Jordan Vosman went from reluctant young member to 4-H leader and farmer himself.

There is a kind of arithmetic to all of this. One person learns something. Another teaches it. Someone else takes it somewhere new. Children become leaders. Members become mentors.

Some take a shift, like Dr. Rod Wilson, driving from Halifax to pull on scrubs in rural emergency departments where one more physician can make the difference between an open door and a closed one.

Some start a group, like Ursula Ryan, who turned her own experience caring for her husband, Dan Gillis, into a dementia support group that grew from nine people to more than 30.

Others coach teams, organize fairs, bake cakes, tend gardens, teach skills, sit on committees, staff booths, make phone calls or take care of the hundred small jobs without which none of it works.

What they have in common is not a title, a uniform or even a particular cause. They see something that matters to their community, their neighbours or their children and decide that, in some small way, it is also their business.

Nobody has to do everything. But when enough of us do something – teach what we know, lend what we have, give an hour, help somebody else along – the effect multiplies.

That is how big, beautiful buildings become more than buildings. It is how budgets become programs, experience becomes institutional memory and one year somehow becomes 160.

It happens because people keep taking their turn.