its ferry system in the lead-up to PEI's centennial year in 1973, after which the MV Confederation and MV Lucy Maude Montgomery were reassigned to other services and left Borden permanently. In 1977, CN reorganized its ferry services in eastern Canada under a separate operating company named CN Marine; the new company immediately ordered a newly designed ferry to replace the MV Abegweit, which reached 30 years service that year. The new vessel, originally named MV Straitway but renamed MV Abegweit (after the original Abegweit was renamed MV Abby prior to being retired), entered service in 1982 and was the largest capacity ferry vessel to operate from Borden. In 1986, CN Marine was renamed Marine Atlantic, to remove all traces of its link to the railway company. At the same time, discussion of a permanent crossing (a "Fixed Link" to the mainland) was revived by the federal government after it received several unsolicited proposals. CN abandoned all of its railway lines in PEI effective December 31, 1989, with the MV John Hamilton Gray hauling the last locomotives and cars off the Island on December 28. With the closure of the railway and the abandonment of the yard, the western side of Borden became an industrial brownfield during the early 1990s. In 1992, it was announced that the Northumberland Strait Crossing Project, or the "Fixed Link", would be built and a Calgary company, Strait Crossing Incorporated (SCI), had been selected as the developer. SCI secured the use of the old Borden Elementary School (which had been replaced several years earlier by the Amherst Cove Consolidated School on the northern edge of town) and undertook drill core sampling for bridge pier locations through 1993. In 1994, a farm property on Amherst Head, immediately east of Borden, was purchased and a staging facility was constructed for building massive bridge components on shore. A large pier was built into the harbour to accommodate a heavy lift marine crane which would carry the components into the Northumberland Strait to be installed. Throughout the 1994–1996 period, Borden's local economy grew at an unprecedented rate with the influx of over 5,000 workers in the town of 800. The longest-serving mayor of Borden was Gilbert Bell, who served from 1959 to 1986. Confederation Bridge Project The project was named Confederation Bridge and upon its opening on May 31, 1997, the ferry service closed after 70 years of daily