PORT HAWKESBURY – With the local business community blindsided by the COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying state of emergency in Nova Scotia, the Strait Area Chamber of Commerce has taken a lead role in helping the region’s entrepreneurs adapt to these uncertain times.

Susan Fox, who took the role of the chamber’s Acting Executive Director following the departure of Amanda Mombourquette in March, is now spearheading an online resource to help local customers find businesses that offer service outside of the traditional brick-and-mortar set-up so familiar to many in the Strait Area.

Fox’s brainchild, the “Businesses That Deliver” Facebook page, now has separate departments for the Cape Breton North and Cape Breton South-Northeastern Nova Scotia regions. The social media portal offers a free advertising channel to local enterprises who have adapted their business models to provide curbside and at-home deliveries of their products.

The chamber also provides free webinars to its members to help them navigate assistance programs available to small business owners from the federal and provincial governments, as well as the chamber itself. The organization has also offered Zoom conferences with Cape Breton-Canso MP Mike Kelloway, and the chamber will present its traditional Annual General Meeting and the accompanying awards ceremony in a virtual manner next month.

Following on the success of the chamber’s FemPower conference in Baddeck, which took place days before Nova Scotia entered lockdown mode, chamber officials are also offering online training sessions with some of the FemPower participants and keynote speakers in order to promote such concepts as good mental health and proper nutrition during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the speakers for the first round of FemPower webinars are nutritionist Roni Davis and dance instructor Michelle Greenwell.

Noting that these webinars are scheduled to run only days after the mass shooting in Colchester and Cumberland Counties that resulted in the deaths of 23 people, Fox declared that the Strait Area Chamber of Commerce wants to keep the emotional and mental health of its members as a top priority item, with the spring of 2020 delivering so many stressful moments on top of the pressure normally faced by those trying to operate a small business.