in the 1960s as the town experienced a population boom due to an increase in the workforce at the lumber mill. Passenger rail service ended altogether in 1976, and the Nairn railway station was demolished sometime after. The focus of development in the town in recent decades has increasingly been on improving infrastructure and local services in the hopes of attracting new residents, and functioning largely as a residential community with significant industrial activity throughout the township relative to its population, with some remaining commercial activity remaining in the form of the truck stop. On November 22, 2021, Laurier Falldien resigned as the town's mayor, citing opposition to COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Demographics In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Nairn and Hyman had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021. Economy Since shortly after its settlement, Nairn's primary economic activity has been logging and lumber milling, and the lumber mill there is today owned and operated by EACOM Timber Corporation. There was some minor agricultural activity in the township in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but this has since declined. The Nairn Falls Dam and Generating Plant, built in 1915, was once a source of employment for some people in the town, but has since become almost entirely automated. The town is home to two local businesses involved in construction and transportation, OCL Trucking and Excavating and T. Bell Transport, which both operate gravel pits in the area. Nairn's historic commercial area, centred around the railway station and the intersection of Front and Hall Streets, once featured three hotels, three general stores, two barbershops, two pool halls, a boarding house, a butcher shop, a men's furnishing store, and a post office. It began to decline after the first half of the 20th century, and the former commercial buildings have mostly been converted into private homes. The last surviving business establishment in this area is the post office. As the old commercial area declined, a new southern commercial area began to develop starting in the late 1940s, after the new Highway 17 route was constructed around 1947. This began with the relocation of an existing business, Al's Inn, from the junction of MacIntyre and Minto Streets to a new location