08/26/2026
I would like to address some comments made on the Burlington community page about the store.
For starters I would like to introduce ourselves as Katelynn Berube and Mark Ireland, we've been together / married for a little over 10 years. We have three young daughters together. I, being Mark Ireland, have two older daughters from a previous relationship.
I was more or less born and raised in Lincoln Maine, and spent a lot of my childhood at my grandparents house on the Transalpine road by The Narrows. I say that to say I didn't spend a lot of time in Burlington growing up, but some of my earliest memories involved coming to Burlington 4th of July and one of my earliest memories, probably 4 or 5 years old, was catching a greased pig at the 4th of July.
I also have many memories with my grandmother, Helen Jipson (Sibley), riding on these back roads and even eating at the Nicatous Lodge.
Later on in life, there's plenty of memories with my aunts, cousins and grandmother going and playing bingo at the VFW in Burlington.
Unfortunately there's some bad memories here as well, like my grandmother's memorial service at the VFW Hall.
I've gone in different directions in my lifetime. I've lived in Connecticut for almost 10 years off and on, worked in Virginia and recently worked over the road construction from Niagara Falls, Chester, PA, Spokane, Washington, to Long Beach, California.
More recently, roughly the last 3 years, my wife and I have found ourselves living in this beautiful community of Burlington Maine in a trailer my grandfather, Clayton Sibley, owns who was born and raised and still lives in Burlington Maine. He is 84 years old and a Veteran of the Korean war.
If you have any questions about how things used to be or how things currently are, he is a good guy to ask. My great uncle Charlie Harding is another example.
When I moved back to this community 3 years ago, the lack of community involvement I found disappointing in this community, I will talk about that later.
One thing that blew me away was getting back into hunting and fishing with my daughters and realizing what a gem our community is here in Burlington.
I'm nobody special, I didn't come from money, I've made my mistakes like many people in my generation, but I've always tried to be a good man, a good provider for my family, and a good father to my daughters.
Shortly after coming to Burlington, the business venture my wife and I began didn't work out. At the same time, we learned that the general store was going to be going on the market. Unfortunately, with the last business venture dissolving, we didn't have the funds for the down payment on the store.
After talks and negotiating with the previous owners Rick and Lori, my grandfather was able to help with the funds for the purchase of the store. To be clear, my wife is the owner of the Burlington General Store. For personal reasons that I would not like to get into at this time, my wife is the owner of Burlington general, I am a volunteer / media face for Burlington General.
In a very short time after we took over the store, due to the fact of ATV trails closing last October 28th, we rushed to do our grand opening. At which point, Trailmaster Justin had made a very successful social media platform and from what I was seeing, he was doing very positive promotion for local businesses including businesses in Burlington and using his platform to do a lot of good for the community.
So I made it a point after approval for our plans for the grand opening to reach out to Justin. After a 5-minute phone call one night sharing our plans for the store, he asked if he could call me back. When he called me back he asked me to meet him at his home in Lee to meet with him and some of the people in his organization. I went into that meeting, explained who I was, our plans for the grand opening and our long-term plans and aspirations for the Burlington General store. The following morning at 11:00 a.m. the Cold Stream Cruzers came out and shot three videos about the store, one being about the grand opening. From the time that video was published until our grand opening, that video had over 50,000 views.
During that week and a half we had to plan for our grand opening, I also reached out to organizations in our town that seemed overjoyed to get involved with our event. They soon gave us a cold shoulder and did not show up to our event and did not help in any fashion whatsoever.
It is completely understandable, that when someone new in town is trying to do something out of the norm in town for those already established to stand at a safe distance should new endeavors not work.
Cold Stream Cruzers (Trailmaster Justin) on the other hand showed up in full force with any and all help they could provide.
Since then, it has been a great honor here at Burlington General to be involved in some of the wonderful events and fundraisers and community work on a daily basis by the Cold Stream Cruzers.
Since we have been involved with the Cold Stream Cruzers and Trailmaster Justin specifically, we have had people reach out about Justin, his past, his reputation, etc. But so far I have never one time seen any of those accusations first hand or in any fashion.
One common thread has been that it's hearsay from a few people down the line. One issue I have found being a small main community is that it's easy for people to hold up other people's past mistakes/shortcomings rather than celebrating the good they are doing or celebrate the success they have had.
Unfortunately, one common thread, that hopefully some of us could agree on, is to point out others shortcomings to make our own shortcomings seem less significant.
I feel as a member of this community that the best solution to that issue is to as a community turn inward and improve ourselves and from there encourage our neighbors to do better with their shortcomings, but not to forget to praise even the smallest successes and to encourage more of it.
This being said, what has happened at the Burlington General store over the last 10 to 11 months has been remarkable. Not by any doings of me or my wife but the result of our community coming together and supporting us and supporting the Burlington General Store, so that any success that has had is a badge of success for our entire community that we should be proud of.
All that being said, this one year anniversary event has really opened my eyes to how much of a void there is between the older generation and the younger generation. Certain things have come to light that has shown me how big that void is between generations in this small community. In the course of that journey, I have met many incredible people from our community, some of which have fallen through the cracks. Incredible stories of active combat veterans that have not gotten the acknowledgment or recognition of their service by our community or our country.
This event on the 10th is no longer a one-year anniversary event, it is about the following four things:
Putting a spotlight on the wonderful community we have in Burlington Maine.
Bringing our community out to see each other face to face to enjoy themselves and hopefully reignite a flame that seems to have been burned out sometime ago.
Give proper honor and recognition to two combat veterans.
And hopefully more importantly relearn what small community and real patriotism actually is.
In conclusion, to address some of the rumors, everything at the store for this event is free other than what folks choose to buy at the store or from vendors because we want the entire community regardless of their financial situation to be welcome to come out and enjoy this event with us.
I in no way, shape, or form, will I ever be a politician. Also in no way shape or form should a person or an organization reach out to me for financial advice.
Hopefully this clears up some Facebook comments made today and answers some questions to the community about who I am and where I came from. .
If anyone has any further questions, I encourage you to stop by the Burlington General store and speak to me in person or pick up a phone and call the Burlington General store and talk to me personally.
A special thanks for the overwhelming support of those in our community this last year and all those involved in making the Burlington General store a success. Hope to see all of you on October 10th.
Thank you for your time,
Mark Ireland and Katelynn Berube
