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Ideas and vision, as we have said time and time again, are what’s needed to help Bathurst and the surrounding area move forward. Along with, of course, the financial resources – dreams without cash will never become reality.

Economic transformation is possible, and there were various nuggets of good news contained in last month’s State of the Region address by Enterprise Chaleur, not the least of which was the fact that there was a net gain of jobs between 2001 and 2006, despite the closure of the Bathurst mill.

The former Smurfit-Stone mill shut down three years ago next month and still sits idle. A company source told us in May that while there have been no recent nibbles in terms of a potential buyer, neither are there any plans at present to dismantle the mill.

That’s good because as it’s long as it’s standing, there’s hope someone will buy the mill and put it back in business, in one capacity or another. It’s a straightforward matter of finding the right investors/company/whoever to step up to the plate with a sound business plan.

It can happen and has already elsewhere. Consider a news story in the July 8 edition of the Telegraph-Journal newspaper.

“The transformation of the 19th-century Eastern Fine Papers Inc. mill in Brewer, Maine. into a 21st-century modular construction yard serves as both a how-to guide and an inspiration to New Brunswick communities – Miramichi, Bathurst, Dalhousie – that are struggling to replace goodpaying forestry jobs and find new uses for shuttered paper and pulp mills.into a modern manufacturing,”wrote reporter David Shipley.

This all didn’t happen overnight, and it was achieved via “an innovative approach to community economic development, intelligent government tax and grant programs and the passion and commitment of a local business to its home.”

(To read the story, go online at canadaeast.com and click on Saint John, doing a search for“Finding a new job for an old plant.”) We can transform our mill, too, with the right kind of thinking - that is, looking towards the future and not the past. A trip to Brewer by our elected local representatives – municipal, provincial and federal - should be looked at. Or at least some detailed conference calls arranged.

Brewer is in the United States, true enough, but economic difficulties and challenges in Maine are very much on a par with what we’re up against in Northern New Brunswick.

And if the good people of Brewer can turn things around for their mill, we should be able to eventually do likewise.