Multi-use pathway to be renamed

The multi-use pathway that runs between Reserve Mines and Sydney is now called the Maryann Corbett Trail.

Corbett is a former resident of the New Waterford area who, at the age of 69, won a 15-mile walking race along the Sydney-Glace Bay Highway in 1929.

Members of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality’s Active Transportation Committee came up with the name-change to honour the woman they deem to have been a remarkable example of a person “who incorporated physical activity into her everyday life and was a true practitioner of active transportation.”

Cape Breton Post columnist Paul MacDougall penned a feature story on Corbett two years ago.

He wrote that she was an extraordinary woman who worked as a midwife, ran a big farm and raised 11 children, while still making time to walk. And walk and walk.

In fact, MacDougall revealed that Corbett, who died in 1944 at the age of 83, not only did all the farm chores before she left for the race but walked to Glace Bay’s South Street field starting line, walked the 15-mile race into Sydney at top speed, and then walked back to New Waterford, where she was the first one up the next day for chores.

Up until the Cape Breton Regional Municipality council meeting on Monday, the trail was known as the Grand Lake Road Multi Use Path, a name that became somewhat inaccurate following its extension to Reserve Mines.

A ceremony to official re-name the trail and celebrate its completion is expected to be held later this fall.