Millinocket offers lessons for struggling Atlantic towns

In one-industry towns across Atlantic Canada, communities are struggling with job losses and population decline after that traditional industry has ended.

In Bathurst, what was once the world's largest zinc mine has run out of zinc.

In Cape Breton, the coal is gone. Pulp mills and saw mills have closed and in fishing villages along the coasts, the fish aren't as plentiful as they used to be.

• LISTEN: Atlantic Voice — When the Stacks Came Down

These towns and villages in Canada are looking for a new lease on life for the future.

A small Maine community near the Maine-New Brunswick border, Millinocket, may have experiences and lessons to share as it deals with its own decline and rebirth.

The Great Northern Paper company that sustained the town of Millinocket for more than 100 years has been dismantled after going bankrupt in 2008, leaving only a few buildings on the site, now locked up behind rusting gates.

But people in Millinocket are working to 'pull the community up by its bootstraps.'

Restoring pride

A short walk down the street from the now-closed mill site, community volunteers restored the bandstand to its former glory with a power wash, a paint job and new red, white and blue awnings.

Restoring the bandstand is part of the work going on to restore pride in a place dealing with decline.

Donald Poland is a planning consultant affiliated with CZB out of Alexandria, Virginia. He was part of a team at CZB who volunteered services to the community of Millinocket in 2014 and published its report as a nine-page letter to the town's citizens. It recommended among other things that the town needed to invest in itself to deal with vacant buildings and space and to beautify the town.

"They're easy things that often communities don't recognize as being important. When you look at larger cities, it's the grand redevelopment scheme. Everyone wants to build a convention centre. Everyone wants to attract a sports team but they don't focus on  the image,  the character of the market and how important the esthetic qualities are.

They're easy things that often communities don't recognize as being important.- Donald Poland, consultant

"If you go to a wealthy community, we know it instinctively that it's a wealthy place that has pride and takes care of itself," says Poland.

Long-time resident Nancy Dewitt says the bandstand has been an important part of the town's history and having it fixed up means a lot to people in town.

"I saw a lot of comments on Facebook after we posted the photos. One man says he's so touched, you know, he lives in Bangor now but it means a lot to everyone who ever lived here, the bandstand," she said.

"When I was young, we used to have a band there every Thursday night and our parents would bring us down and all the kids would join hands and dance around the bandstand. So we have very fond memories of it, that it got the town's people together.

"We hope that this Christmas, we have a lady who has a holiday committee going and she's raising money to build a Santa hut and she's going to take over the lighting of the bandstand. There will be a Santa hut, their going to have carollers, hot chocolate so they're trying to bring some of that bandstand tradition back to the town, which would be great," says Nancy Dewitt.

Crowd-sourcing website

Dewitt's son Sean, 40, works with the World Resource Institute in Washington D.C. and recently launched a volunteer non-profit organization called Our Katahdin. It is a crowd-sourcing website for community projects and economic development.

"I had this idea for quite a while. I wasn't moving the idea into action."

When the mill stacks came down in November 2014 and I said to myself, `You've been working in economic development and forest products and all these things around the world.' Most of the work I do is outside the United States and just thinking what would my grandmothers say to me right now — apply that stuff back home and make some small contribution to move these things forward," says Dewitt.

Dewitt launched the project with successful executives, who like him are living somewhere else but who grew up in the region.

So far the website has raised money to pay for 10 community projects including banners for the main street, a mobile movie theatre, and a community garden.

Amy Collinsworth, 26, is one of the people who stepped forward to take on the revitalization of Hillcrest park in her neighbourhood, a place she drives by everyday. She also started a Facebook page called There's No Mill in Ocket where she posts updates and asks for help as she works through her plans to fix up the park. Her page now has more than 900 followers.

Now people are starting to move forward and I think the mill idea is kind of now in the past.- Amy Collinsworth

"I think after the smoke stack got blown up; the last of the mill, like that was it. Now people are starting to move forward and I think the mill idea is kind of now in the past. People are more into honouring it now so anyway they can do it. And they want to build the town forward, that's the momentum. Yeah, no, `There Ain't No Mill in Ocket' like there's no mill any more. Like get over it, move on, " says Collinsworth.

Our Katahdin honoured

Down East Magazine editors picked Our Katahdin for the 2015 best By-The-Bootraps Community Reinvention.  Sean Dewitt calls the community projects small wins.

"It's empowering. It says, you know what 'something is better now than it once was' and if we can embrace that idea and through small wins, I do believe very much, in small wins. I think big wins are riskier, they can evaporate too quickly. I think small wins are unstoppable. I think if we can just amass enough small wins, those will become larger and larger and over time many small wins can revolutionize a community.  It's been proven around the country and around the world."

And the work of Our Katahdin doesn't stop at community beautification projects.

Sean Dewitt is creating a way for people to invest in companies doing business in town and is also setting up an entrepreneur incubator program.

"So we're now looking at some various businesses that could be launched or strengthened with a new source of capital with the idea that, let's own our future. Often times we haven't owned a lot of the things that have been happening here and I think there's an opportunity to do things differently," says Dewitt.

The story of Millinocket is like so many places in the Atlantic Region -- a one industry town trying to find its second act when that industry dies.

And while the town council in Millinocket is still facing serious challenges with the loss of jobs and tax revenue, councillor Michael Madore thinks the efforts of people in the community is helping.

"There's a grass roots effort that's happening here which I think is going to go ahead to make us a lot stronger community than we ever were because it's going to come from the individuals and not the corporation. The corporation isn't here any more but the people still are, and it's them that are going to push the town through one way or another, " says Madore.

Consultant Don Poland says Millinocket is a metaphor for the change happening in Canada and the United States.

"If you can see the diamonds in the rough, or the little things that are positive or those connections to bigger regional assets or what have you and you can start building on your strengths and where your pride lies and reestablish that pride that you can have success and prosperity again."