The Orange Lodge in Queenstown is open this winter and the parking lot is now being cleared after each snowfall. Lodge officials were finally successful in finding someone in the local area with equipment heavy enough to do the job. Many feared the only community meeting facility between Brown’s Flat and Gagetown would be inaccessible this winter after the province decided to end the practice of plowing churches and community halls. Until this year the Department of Transportation plowed the parking lot free of charge. That policy changed last spring as a cost saving measure for the province.

Lodge officials initially had trouble finding someone to plow the yard and were worried about their ability to keep the hall open this winter.  When word of this predicament spread, the community banded together and a committee was formed. Petitions and protest letters were circulated and  both the Minister of Transportation and the Premier were lobbied to change the policy.  The Master of the Lodge, George Lacey says they finally convinced Denis Landry, the Minister of Transportation to agree to plow the hall until January 5th but word of that decision never got passed down to the DOT crews who actually do the plowing.

Lacey says they’ll be able to do the plowing for now but there is a concern down the road they won’t be able to continue paying for it. “For this winter we should survive,” he says. “But we’re kind of disappointed by their reaction to the whole thing.”