Fate of Elmsdale Community Centre up in the air

If these walls could talk!

Since the old two-room school was turned into the ElmsdaleCommunity Centre in 1975, it's hosted hundreds of community birthday and anniversary parties, weddings and wedding showers, 4-H meetings, bakes sales and craft fairs, and plenty of music.

We just can't run the centre with the few members we have left. Norma MacLellan

But as the community itself has aged and its population shrunk, so has demand for the centre and now its future is up in the air.

"It's been a great addition to the community, but like we're down to just a minimum number of members," said Norma MacLellan, secretary of the Elmsdale Community Centre.

In its heyday, the community centre had 100 members who would help maintain the building and manage it during functions, MacLellan said, but that's dwindled to just 14, many of them elderly. She notes the youngest of the centre's members is 61 years old.

'It serves a lot of area'

"We're wearing out," MacLellan said. "We don't get a break."

There's a public meeting Tuesday at 7 p.m. to determine the future of the little centre.

"We just can't run the centre with the few members we have left," said MacLellan, who is hoping several new members will come forward at the meeting.

MacLellan believes the centre is still needed in the community and is a great place to hold functions.

"It serves a lot of area," she said, noting it's in a location central to the municipalities of O'Leary, Tignish and Alberton.

"It would be a shame to see it closed down or sold."

Community members have done a lot of work on the centre over the years, adding a big kitchen and stage with the help of fundraising and government grants.

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