When a new reporter comes to town, it’s customary (at least within our small chain) for that reporter to introduce him or herself with a column explaining who they are.
Inevitably, that reporter is going to end up at an elementary school or a fair, and it helps head off any frantic calls to the RCMP about the stranger with a camera claiming to be from the newspaper. Nobody likes getting tasered.
But this isn’t REALLY an introduction, because I’ve been living in the neck of this neck of the woods for over a decade. Normally, I handle the Town & Country, that insert that goes into the Barrhead Leader (and the Westlock News, the Athabasca Advocate and the Lac La Biche Post).
I also normally cover the education beat, which means attending Pembina Hills school division meetings throughout the school year.
For the past two weeks, I’ve been serving as your newsroom of one because the other reporter, Barry Kerton, was due for a vacation, and Rick De Vries is still on leave, tending to his father in Ontario.
And while small-town newspapers aren’t generally regarded as bastions of high-quality journalism, it does take more than an intelligent monkey to fill the paper with stories and photos.
(For one thing, a monkey would never have the patience to sit in provincial court without throwing feces at the judge. Damn dirty apes.)
As such, someone had to step up to the plate and help out with coverage in Barrhead. That responsibility fell to me.
Although summer is usually the time for things to wind down, it’s been a very busy two weeks. On July 18, I had barely risen from bed when I got the text about the Dallas Hotel fire, so I ended up racing over here from Westlock.
There’s also been July Fest, the Highridge Rodeo, two provincial baseball championships, the Communities in Bloom tour and a whole bunch of other little things.
I know I’ve missed stuff. I never got to do anything about the hailstorm a week back, even though I had heard bits and chunks about damaged crops and gardens and so on.
I’ve also failed miserably to get to a number of events I knew about. If you want to guarantee my attendance at an event, don’t hold it at 9 a.m., because I am not a morning person. I am a “Please God, don’t make me get out of this bed” person.
Anyways, I have tried to do a reasonably good job of covering events in the Barrhead area, and I hope you can forgive some slip-ups.
Rick’s leave is effectively indefinite, so you’ll probably see me in Barrhead more frequently, at least for the next little while. I’m not going to do the commute from Westlock every single day, but the Leader will need some help with coverage.
On the plus side, that will likely mean some more Barrhead-centric stuff in the Town & Country. So y’know, silver lining.
