Effort to refurbish historic St. Stephen basketball court considers next steps
CBC
Most people would never think the old building at 4-8 King St. in St. Stephen was anything more than an empty retail space.
But people in the town believe it is the oldest surviving basketball court in the world, where a game was played less than two years after Canadian James Naismith invented the sport.
For Robert Otto, a longtime basketball fan, seeing the tiny gymnasium on the upper floor of the building for the first time was an exciting experience.
"I sort of got chills," Otto said.
"I thought it was amazing. You could almost hear the squeak of the shoes."
Otto had recently moved to St Stephen, and he agreed to head up the organization trying to turn the building into a museum dedicated to the event.
Canada First Basketball is nearing the end of phase one of its fundraising goal of $1 million for what Otto says is an estimated $10-million project.
That has allowed the Town of St. Stephen to purchase the property on behalf of the organization, an effort that began in 2018.
The building was home to the local YMCA back at the end of the 19th century and housed a number of local businesses over the past 120 years.
In 2010, after a small fire, the carpet in the upper floor was removed, revealing the original gymnasium floor.
That kicked off research into a local legend that the first basketball game outside the U.S. happened there.
It turns out that wasn't quite true.
In September 1893, a man named Lyman Archibald arrived in town to run the Y.
He was a member of James Naismith's YMCA class in Springfield, Mass., and played in that famous first game in December 1891.
P.E.I.'s Public Schools Branch is looking for 50 substitute bus drivers, and it'll be recruiting at three job fairs on Saturday, June 8. The job fairs are located at the Atlantic Superstore in Montague, Royalty Crossing in Charlottetown, and the bus parking lot of Three Oaks Senior High in Summerside. All three run from 9 a.m. until noon. Dave Gillis, the director of transportation and risk management for the Public Schools Branch, said the number of substitute drivers they're hiring isn't unusual. "We are always looking for more. Our drivers tend to have an older demographic," he said.