Jamie Ferguson started as Tantramar’s new manager of Active Living just over two months ago, overseeing all of Tantramar’s parks, trails, sports fields, green-spaces, as well as the Tantramar Veterans Memorial Civic Centre. The job also includes overseeing special events and programming, including hiring and managing a team of 18 summer students.
CHMA got a chance to sit down with Ferguson at the Civic Centre in April, and started off asking him about his background, and how he ended up in Tantramar:
Ferguson says the job is a “mixed bag”, which appealed to him because of his varied background. Originally from Nova Scotia, Ferguson attended the Nova Scotia Agricultural College, and worked a lot “doing community stewardship and community programming with our farming communities.” At one point Ferguson had a job looking at wildlife habitat stewardship and agriculture for a region including the Chignecto Isthmus. “That was my first exposure to Sackville and the Tantramar marshes,” says Ferguson, “which really captured my heart.”
Ferguson has a masters degree in geography, with a focus on natural resources, and worked with the agricultural community in Ontario before ‘switching gears’ to his a job with the city of Mississauga. There he took on a parks management role, working with community groups and overseeing programming.
“The common theme has always been sort of that community focus,” says Ferguson, “providing that opportunity for community members and our residents to really develop programs and deliver things in partnership with the municipality.”
Ferguson says he learned a lot working in southern Ontario, but was eager to “get back to the East Coast, and back to a rural, smaller town pace of life.”
“One of the things that really stood out here with Tantramar is that, you know, even though it’s a smaller community, the number of programs and community events and outreach happening here blew me away,” says Ferguson.
With his background in horticulture and forestry, Ferguson says he’s looking forward to working on new opportunities with groups like the Sackville Community Garden and Sackville Farmers Market. Ferguson says he’s open to exploring options with, “food, flowers, trees, and seeing how we can tie that together into to the work here in Tantramar.”
Just two months into the job, Ferguson says he feels part of the “small but mighty team” working out of the Tantramar Civic Centre under director Matt Pryde. Ferguson says that team is working to “leverage our community partnerships and community groups to deliver phenomenal programming for the municipality and for our residents.”
He says Tantramar’s amalgamation in 2023 is an opportunity to look at “how we can grow and develop recreation, parks, culture, and all of those opportunities for all of the residents of Tantramar across the board.”
