Alma’s mayor Kirstin Shortt
is the definition of energy
Margaret Patricia Eaton
Mayor, private investigator,
business woman, author,
community volunteer, counsellor,
multi-lingual world traveller, dog
lover. Which describes
Kirsten Shortt?
If you chose mayor, you’d be
correct, because Shortt, first
elected in 2012, is now in her
second term as mayor of the
Village of Alma, following 15
years as deputy mayor
and councillor.
But if you’d chosen any other
option, you’d also be correct.
Born in Hamburg, Shortt studied
English, Russian and Spanish in
addition to her native German.
She’d also earned a B. Sc.
(Pharmacology) before she
emigrated to Canada in 1974,
planning to further her studies in
that field at the University
of Toronto.
“But my English wasn’t great,”
she says, “so I had to do a pre-
university course to prove I could
understand it and by that time I’d
become interested in other things.”
She graduated instead from UofT
Kirstin Shortt says Asia is her preferred travel
destination. She’s been to China, Thailand and
Cambodia and has spent time at a Buddhist
retreat — “an awesome experience.”
PHOTO: SUBMITTED
with an Honors B. A. (Social Science)
and an M. Sc (Information Science).
“I put that degree, which was about
the dissemination of information,
to good use and worked as a private
investigator. I was self-employed
and worked for large insurance
companies, primarily on death
claims. If a Canadian should
die overseas and there could be
questionable circumstances or
documentation missing, a red
flag would go up in the office and
they would contact me and I’d
work with my global contacts,
interpreters, foreign police,
consulates.”
It was a chance reference to Alma
made by an insurance broker
from Riverview that led her to
New Brunswick. “Being from
northern Germany I liked being
near water,” she says, “and I
realized because of the work I
did, it really didn’t matter where I
lived, and I thought Alma would
be a nice area to run a B&B.”
After purchasing a large older
home in 1999 she ran it as Amber
Brook B&B, but as she moved
into ‘retirement’, her time was
consumed with public service. “I
love an opportunity to give back,”
she says, “and once I start a project
I don’t quit.”
What sort of project? For 10 years
Shortt ran the local computer access
centre; authored, with the late
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