From Downeast Magazine: Eastport rings in the new year twice— first at 11 p.m. (when it’s midnight in neighboring New Brunswick), with the drop of a big maple leaf and a round of “O Canada,” and then again at 12 a.m., with the drop of an 8-foot sardine and a brass band playing “Auld Lang Syne.” The celebration draws hundreds, and it reflects what Hugh French, director of Eastport’s Tides Institute & Museum of Art, calls “a certain quirkiness about the place.” French and his wife, Kristin McKinlay, started their eclectic arts organization 18 years ago “as kind of a challenge to see if we could pull it together here.”