Two toddlers, two university degrees – a bachelor of science in geography, and a masters of science in biogeography – and no car.
Living in the village of Cookstown in the early 1980s, without a means of transportation, I was desperate to find some activity that would provide mental stimulation, beyond the weekly church basement pre-school playroom.
That’s when I met Gary Biesinger, editor of the Cookstown Advocate.
The Advocate was something unique, as a community newspaper. Not only was it a monthly, it was entirely produced using computers and desktop publishing – the first paper in Ontario to be so produced. Gary truly was a pioneer in the field of community news.
Not that that impressed me at the time. I was still pounding out my stories on an old Underwood typewriter.
The political scene was very different in those days. The Village of Cookstown was still an independent corporation, with a duly-elected mayor and council that met regularly in the non-handicapped accessible building at 19 Queen St.
It wasn’t until years later – after a disastrous misinterpretation of the cost of the village’s sewage treatment plant – that Cookstown was amalgamated with the Township of Innisfil and reduced to a single representative on Innisfil council.
My role, initially, had nothing to do with politics. I was the nature writer, using my background in geography, climatology and biology to introduce kids to the wonderful world of critters to be found in the surrounding area, from bats to snakes and spiders.
I eventually helped produce a monthly children’s page, with games and activities, and a serialized children’s story, which I also wrote.
But that was just the start. Working part-time at the Cookstown Advocate, first under Gary and then, after he sold the paper, under Mariellen Venhola, I gradually expanded my journalistic output and began to cover Cookstown council.
The Cookstown Advocate was my introduction to journalism and the start of a career that was to continue for more than two decades. It was a “back-door” entry into the field, which meant that I had to learn how to construct an article, the proper use of sources, all of the nitty-gritty details of the writers’ craft, on the fly.
It was at times a painful process. My first ‘feature’ story – on that same Cookstown sewage treatment plant – was a rambling 1,500-word science paper, and if there’s another human being on the face of this planet who actually plowed all the way through it, I’d like to shake their hand.
I have since worked for other community newspapers, including The Bradford Gazette and The Bradford Times, during the era of print, and now the online papers BradfordToday, InnisfilToday and BarrieToday.
But the Cookstown Advocate is where I had my start and holds a unique place not only in the history of journalism in Ontario, but in my heart.
