One night last week, people filled the Masonic hall in Caledonia to talk about their community and how to keep it vital.

Dennis Pilkey, director of the province’s Community Counts program, which is a division of the Department of Finance, came down from Halifax to moderate the discussions. He drove around the village and pronounced it a “wonderful� community, and said the answers to how to move it forward were in the hands of the people in the room.

Pilkey is a big fan of doing a community inventory of assets, then using that to develop strategies for making an area stronger. Local people have been concerned lately due to recent events, including the loss of the elementary school by fire, a false start to a high speed internet system and the closing of the gas station in Caledonia.

Progress has been made on all of those fronts. Up on the hill, behind the site of the vanished elementary school, a cluster of what looks like migrant workers’ shacks will house the children of the North Queens and South Annapolis area until a new school is completed. Further, I wrote last week about the excitement of the broadband internet system being turned back on.

There may also be moves on the gas station front. A local merchant said at the meeting that he was interested in trying to have gasoline pumps installed as a part of his operation. Groups of people talking afterwards pledged their support for the enterprise, aware – as I said last week – that in rural areas of the province you either use it or lose it.

Some offered the opinion that with the previous gas station, where Irving ripped what were said to be perfectly good tanks out of the ground and tore down the gas station itself, lingering resentment over the condition the company had left an earlier station site in had hurt sales.

Dennis Pilkey had community members sitting around tables sorting out the good things about the community, things upon which the community could build. He asked the people to name the most important asset the community possessed. Many chose the quality of the people who live in the area, while others named its natural resources, which are responsible for the lumber mills, national park and general attractiveness of the area as a place to live.

He then asked the gathering to identify the community’s specific assets, ranging from associations to physical space. People came up with long lists, including associations such as the Queens County Fair, the fire department, the parent groups associated with the schools, the board of trade, the Heritage House association, church groups, the nursing home and its organizations and many more.

In terms of physical space, one asset was the fact that the village sits on the shore of a lake, with great potential for enhancing its attractiveness. The national park is nearby, bringing in visitors who should be encouraged to stop for the services. The woods, rivers and lakes both provide income for forestry workers and serve as a magnet for those looking to spend time in a natural environment. There are a ballpark, swimming pool, facilities in the school, plus a new lighted horse riding ring at the fair grounds which is second to none in the province.

The area has nice homes, a credit union, good stores – including one of the oldest general stores in the province – a museum, churches, a mobile library, the Mersey Tobeatic Research Institute, Kejimkujik National Park and National Historic Site, restaurants, the mills, forestry companies, an internationally-recognized blueberry juice operation, contractors, the nursing home and both a junior-senior high and elementary school, as well as a nursery school.

It has people ranging from workers in the woods and mills, teachers, students, dozens of researchers, park workers, carpenters, builders, health care workers, doctors, a nurse practitioner, retired people, community volunteers and a host of others.

Dennis Pilkey encouraged those at the meeting to get to work on a plan for the community, the steps being to make a formal map of the area’s assets, to build relationships among the people, to explore how the assets can be mobilized, to engage the people in the area and to develop plans that can tap into outside resources.

Afterwards, people had tea and coffee, munched on cheese and pepperoni and talked about what could be done. It seemed that there was an energy and spirit that might pay off.

Tom Sheppard can be reached at tsheppar@ca.inter.net