Old St. Andrews

Main

Title

Closing of Kennedy's 1917

Content

Item

Closing of Kennedy’s Hotel, 1917

 

Beacon
Oct 27/1917
Kennedy’s Hotel Closes for the Winter
It is with very sincere regret that we have to announce that Kennedy’s Hotel closes its doors to guest to-day, and will not reopen till early in June next year. This is the first time this famous and inviting hostelry has even temporarily ceased to cater to the travelling public since it was first opened on May 24, 1881, its then proprietor, Mr. Angus Kennedy, who began the hotel business on a site lower down on Water Street over fifty years ago, having moved into it on that date after his former premises had been destroyed by fire.
            The occasion of the temporary closing of this hotel gives another opportunity to reflect and to moralize on the present decadence of the future winter port of Canada. As a port and a commercial and manufacturing centre, St. Andrews does not occupy anything like the position it did over fifty years ago when Mr. Angus Kennedy started in the hotel business in the Town. Many thing contributed to the decline of the business and the place, and the same causes produced similar results in most of the coast towns of the Maritime Provinces. But other towns have introduced new enterprises to take the place of the lost lumber business and shipbuilding industry, and have entered upon careers of expanding prosperity. St. Andrews is now almost entirely without any industry whatever, if we except the relatively small fish-curing and clam-canning establishments which together do not give daily employment within the Town to twenty men. The Town is situated in the most advantageous position conceivable for carrying on many industries; it is beautifully planned, and affords the greatest possible facilities for effective drainage and for the installation of electric light and a water-supply system; and the vacant lots in the Town are crying out for occupants, and the grass-grown and deserted streets plead eloquently for the traffic which lack of enterprise and of cooperation on the part of the townspeople is repelling.
            In summer the place bustles with activity; the natives of the Town who have gone elsewhere to build up other communities, return for a brief season to the dear old Town they love so well; the hotels are thronged with visitors who come here to participate in the delights of scenery and climate which have made the place famous; and the wealthy cottages occupy for three or four months the comfortable summer homes they have built within sight of the ever-alluring Passamaquoddy Bay.
            All this is very nice to think about and to write about and to participate in; but what of the other seven or eight or almost nine months of the year when there is “nothing doing,” and “stagnation” is written large over the whole community?
            The closing of Kennedy’s Hotel this winter is lamentable from every point of view, for a town which is unable to provide the business necessary to keep open profitably all the year round at least one such hotel, must be regarded as an insignificant place. The remedy is not far to seek, it is within easy reach of the people here who have the means and ability, but lack the faith and the enterprise, to grasp it. Those people who have benefited most by the community do the least for it in return; and an utter selfishness on the part of the a number of the permanent residents of the Town is the only reason that the place is lacking in those industries which would attract additional permanent population and retain all the young people who now leave year after year to seek their fortunes in more progressive centers. A word to the wise is sufficient, it is said; but only the blast of Gabriel’s trumpet will arouse those whose selfishness and indifference have deafened them to the eloquent appeals which the Town’s decadence puts forth.