HASTINGS REHABILITATION

Evening Star, Issue 20958, 24 November 1931, Page 7

HASTINGS REHABILITATION

THREE-DAY CARNIVAL [Per United Press Association.] HASTINGS, November 23. As a sort of gesture of defiance to circumstances which have treated the town very badly this year Hastings will hold a three-days’ carnival from Tuesday to Thursday of this week, and there will be a school holiday on Wednesday, •when special excursion trains will run from Napier and Southern _ Hawke’s Bay stations. Processions are to be held every afternoon and evening. The streets will be decorated and specially lighted, and each afternoon and evening there will be sports and merrymaking,' The carnival will be the biggest thing of the kind ever attempted in this district. The whole of the business community is sharing in the organisation and giving its wholehearted support. The carnival was first conceived as a means of raising funds for the relief of distress among the unemployed and returned soldiers, but it soon' took on a more general aspect, and brought in the whole town with it, its first purpose being forgotten in the general hope and belief that better times are ahead. The town is well advanced in the work of reconstruction, and along the principal streets blocks of shops and offices have gone up with surprising rapidity, while tenders for others are being let almost daily. In addition to nearly 200 temporary permits for buildings erected immediatelv after the earthquake and representing about 350 shops and offices, 190 permits for permanent buildings have been issued since April 1. The expenditure represented £144,698. Other large buildings soon to be begun include four hanks, the Post Office, and the Grand Hotel. As the chairman of the Retailers’ Association has said: “What has_ been accomplished has been largely without assistance from the Rehabilitation Committee.” The town is not yet out of the wood, and the carnival is not being held in any spirit of jubilation over the past, but rather as an urge to shed past cares and tribulations and look forward with confidence to happiness and good business in- a reconstructed town.