Around Town

‘He Was Like a Beacon’: New Canaanites Remember the Late Cam Hutchins

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Among the many words that Whitney Williams uses to describe her friend, the late Cam Hutchins—humble, gifted, creative, solid, thoughtful, unpretentious, honest and diplomatic—is “mischievous.”

Once on a cold day during a boys soccer game, Hutchins snapped a picture of Williams as she sat bundled up in the stands in “one of those sleeping bag coats,” she recalled, with “a terrible hat on” and “screaming” with other parents while cheering on their sons, “just looking awful.”

“He took a picture of me, in particular, looking horrible,” Williams recalled with a laugh. “And every now and then, out of nowhere, this photo would just appear on my phone. He would just send it for no reason whatsoever. And I would just be like, ‘Oh my god.’ It was just his way of saying, ‘Hey, I’m just thinking about you.’ But he’s not going to send a nice picture. He’s going to send a horrible picture.”

Earlier this month, as Williams went with friends and family to visit Hutchins in hospice and say goodbye, she recalled through tears, “I said to him, ‘Cam, still the absolute worst picture I’ve ever seen of me.’ ”

”And he said, ‘I had to take a thousand pictures of you before I got a bad one.’ And I thought: That’s just so Cam.

Chris Schipper

‘We Are Lagging Behind’: Parking Officials Recommend Creation of More Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Downtown

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The New Canaan Parking Commission is recommending that the town install a second electric vehicle charging station at Morse Court and at least one more in the Town Hall lot. Officials also should consider updating the New Canaan Zoning Regulations to require developers in creating multi-unit housing to set aside a percentage of attendant spaces for electric vehicles, or ‘EVs,’ with charging units provided, according to Commission Chair Keith Richey. “We look kind of pathetic now because these other towns have got them, have got more charging stations,” Richey said during the appointed body’s regular meeting, held May 6 via videoconference. 

“We are lagging behind,” he said. Richey and Commissioners Laura Budd, Jennifer Donovan, Drew Magratten and Peter Ogilvie voted 5-0 to make the recommendation to the Board of Selectmen. The selectmen are expected to take it up at their regular meeting Tuesday.

Around Town

Quiet Heroes of New Canaan: Kristen Pace (and Family)

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Peter Ogilvie first noticed the activity at Canoe Hill Cemetery in the months after the COVID-19 pandemic set in last year, in driving by it on Laurel Road each day. Perched on a hill off of the east side of Laurel not far from the intersection of Canoe Hill Road, the final resting place of 200-plus New Canaanites—including the town’s (and possibly Connecticut’s) last living slave, Onesimus Comstock—had fallen into disrepair. With little dedicated parking and difficult to access even by foot, given a steep hill and crumbling stone staircase, the .69-acre burial ground was largely covered in weeds and fallen branches, with broken and illegible gravestones scattered about. One day, Ogilvie pulled over to see what was happening in the cemetery, and there met Kristen Pace and her daughters, busy at work. “She took on this project all by herself and in the middle of the pandemic, in the middle of quarantining, and with her daughters out there, did the physical work of cutting down weeds and cleaning up just unbelievable truckloads of crap,” Ogilvie said.

Government

‘It Looks So Wonderful’: High Praise for First-Phase Work Done in Bristow Bird Sanctuary

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The completed first phase in restoring a long-neglected and little-known bird sanctuary in New Canaan—one of the nation’s oldest—is earning high praise from town officials and visitors. Described as a quiet and beautiful wooded area, the Bristow Bird Sanctuary and Wildwood Preserve—thanks to volunteers and Department of Public Works personnel—features attractive new footbridges over meandering streams, a newly dredged pond, seating areas and varied bird feeders, officials said during last week’s meeting of the Parks & Recreation Commission. Responding to a presentation from Public Works Director Tiger Mann on the work that’s been done in Bristow in the past six months, Commissioner Francesca Segalas said, “It looks so wonderful.”

“I am so happy to see this,” she said during the meeting, held Jan. 13 via videoconference. 

Mann shared a photo walkthrough that he’d captured the same morning, starting at the northern end of the 17-acre bird sanctuary—accessible through Mead Park, at the back of the little league baseball fields—and following pedestrian trails toward its other entrance along Route 106. As he walked along, Mann said he found the park “very quiet.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” he said.

Government

Commission Rejects ‘Pollinator Garden’ at Mead Park

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The Parks & Recreation Commission on Wednesday night denied a request from local volunteers seeking permission to install pollinating plants on a traffic island at Mead Park. The “pollinator garden,” proposed for the traffic island near the little fields and entrance to the Mead Park Playground, was designed as part of a larger “pathway” serving butterflies, birds, bees and other insects and animals that move pollen from one plant to another. Several New Canaan organizations have been at work for more than one year to increase pollinator-friendly habitat here. Yet members of the appointed Parks & Rec Commission said they feared planting pollinator-friendly species at the traffic island would bring additional bee stings and motor vehicle traffic to a largely pedestrian area. 

“That’s just such a busy place in terms of automobile traffic,” Commissioner Hank Green said at the meeting, held via videoconference. “A lot of big SUVs, a lot of these cars are being driven by teens.