Dozens of people attended a grand opening of the Margaret A. Keenan Early Learning Centre in Bath, N.B., on Thursday after more than a year of work to construct a new building. The centre has classes for children from babies to grade school. It also offers speech therapy, play groups and community programming. For the centre’s board chair Somer Drost, the new space is a big deal. “The better beginning we can give these children, I believe the better life they can have,” she said. Seventeen years ago, the centre opened at a school which stood on the same location. But when the province demolished it, the centre had to move to the Bath Community School next door, which meant children shared bathrooms with students and sometimes the centre had to cancel afterschool programming. “We have a population with higher needs and we need to be able to support them in any way we can,” Drost said. Last year the provincial government provided $840,000 for a new building while the federal government gave $500,000. But the rebuilding effort was headed — and partially paid for — by Woodstock resident Gary Keenan and his brother Joe. Although neither Keenan nor his 12 siblings live in Bath, they all went to the school where the centre now stands, and their mother Margaret A. Keenan taught there. The daycare is named in her honour. “She was a wonderful person, she wanted to help people, she left us with those traits,” he said. For him, his donations to the centre are also an investment in the community’s future. “You see the people with family, children and grandchildren that will be going here. You can only imagine coming up and being that next group of people. Who knows what some people will do here,” he said. “I hope that we have more doctors in the years to come. We have lawyers, we have educators, we have trades people.” The young minds attending the centre include Carl and Beth Giberson’s three great-grandsons. “They like it here even when there’s no school,” Carl Giberson said. The couple grew up in Bath and knew the Keenan family. For them, the grand opening is a welcome day. “It’s a great tribute. I think it’s well deserved. I was so excited when they told me they were first doing it that it really touched me,” Beth Giberson said. For more New Brunswick news, visit our dedicated provincial page.
