Saint John says 'NO' to automotive tourism?

The Atlantic Nationals is Canada's largest car show and takes place annually on the second weekend in July in Moncton, New Brunswick. Celebrating its eighth year, the show has annually attracted over 1,500+ cars to New Brunswick and in excess of 100,000 people to the downtown show on Friday and the Centennial Park show on Saturday and Sunday. The show is a not-for-profit event and has been instrumental in building the largest kid's splash park east of Toronto. The park is also fully-accessible for those with disabilities. The Atlantic Nationals and the Greater Moncton Street Rod Association (the show organizers) generously support the Friends of the Moncton Hospital, the Georges Dumont Hospital, the Children's Wish Foundation, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the Kids Help Phone, Camp Goodtime for Kids with Cancer, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Moncton Zoo, local sports teams, the Santa Claus Parade, and countless other worthwhile charities and endeavors.

From a tourism perspective, the Atlantic Nationals is the largest tourist event in the province, bringing visitors from every single Canadian province, and from states as far away as California, Texas, and Florida. Moncton has played host to the Pope, the Rolling Stones, and will soon add the Eagles and Elton John to that list. My Classic Car has featured the Atlantic Nationals twice, just about every hot rod magazine has written an article on the show, Courtney Hanson (of Spike TV) has been a special guest and so has the living legend of hot rod design, Chip Foose. Chip and his family were so impressed that they stayed in our province an extra week to tour it. Moncton's paper, The Times-Transcript recognizes and appreciates what the Atlantic Nationals means to their city and to the province. In the past few weeks no fewer than 30 articles have been written in that paper on the show; each and every one of them positive. On the Friday of the show, virtually the entire front page was dedicated to the Atlantic Nationals and four pages of photos and highlights were contained within.

New Brunswick has one provincial paper; the Saint John based Telegraph Journal, which for the past eight years, has chosen to completely ignore the Atlantic Nationals. That was until today, Saturday, July 19th.

On page 4 of the Telegraph is an article titled 'Louder, bigger, faster...greener?' written by Adam Huras. Does it mention any of the positives of the Atlantic Nationals? No. It contains an interview with an environmental activist saying that the environmental footprint is regressive; "a celebration of carbon", and that that "it's hard to comprehend celebrating a problem."

It's rather ironic that just a few days earlier, a photo and story celebrating Rosie O'Donnell visiting the port city took up half the front page. The story didn't mention that the cruise ship that brought Rosie there burned 10 tonnes of fuel an hour.

It's a shame that the Telegraph can't say anything nice about the Atlantic Nationals. No, it's more than that; it's an embarrassment.

Here's a link to the article:
http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/actualites/article/359066

Please read it, and using the Contact link at the top of the site, send a note to the newsroom telling them that they should be ashamed of their lack of appreciation of our province's largest tourism event.