Small town news captures life at a granular level: rescued animals, obits
On Journalism: Small Town Newspapers, Touring the Kootenays, Part Two
From the Arrowlakes News to the Lumby Valley Times, small town papers provide the human mortar that builds communities and keep locals connected. And they need your help, writes Rod Mickleburgh.
By Rod Mickleburgh
I’M BACK! Just to recap. I recently spent two weeks travelling through BC’s fascinating West Kootenays, in those halcyon days before the election call and the second wave of COVID-19. As I always do when somewhere else, I sought out local newspapers, just as the New York Times’ brilliant media reporter David Carr used to do. It was sad to see how diminished they were. The good news, however, is that they still exist, still employ reporters and continue to serve their communities.
Let us return to those thrilling times of yester-month and sample a few of the tasty tidbits I gleaned from the region’s remaining newspapers. I hope you like them as much as I did.
What’s for sale at the Lumby ...
Sometimes you have to dig a hole to stay alive
Remembering Orme Payne, Part Two of Two
From the Great Depression and prairie drought, to mano-a-mano combat with the Germans in the waning days of war, Orme Payne's life wove a tapestry of the Twentieth Century.
By Rod Mickleburgh
My friend Orme went through a lot in his final years. But when you’ve been through a Depression and a World War, you learn to take things as they come. During our many conversations, he never complained, never felt he was hard done by, even when he experienced the long months of isolation imposed by COVID-19. “I’m confined to barracks” was his matter-of-fact assessment. Over the phone, he was always cheerful. His yarns and colourful expressions never dried up, aided by a memory that remained intact until the end. And damn, he was funny….
Orme died this past September, his body finally giving up the ghost, after 98 years and five months of a very good life. I miss him terribly.
On Remembrance Day, the first Orme has missed in 75 years, ...
How Orme weathered the storm of war in the Signals Corps
Canadian History: Remembering Orme Payne, Part One
This year on Remembrance Day, Rod Mickleburgh felt the loss of a friend, a veteran and a Second World War combat survivor who found strength in his fellow men, and one in particular.
By Rod Mickleburgh
I lost a good friend of mine this fall. Orme Payne, who fought in Italy and Holland during World War Two, passed away at the George Derby Care Home in Burnaby. He was 98 years and five months young, and I use the word “young” advisedly. Through the years, no matter how rough a time the rest of him was having, the strength of his voice never wavered, his mind and memory remained razor sharp, and he never failed to make me laugh. So, Remembrance Day in this most terrible of years will be even more sombre for me than usual. I will be thinking of Orme.
I first met him in 2015, when I wrote a Remembrance Day story for the Globe and Mail on the long, remarkable friendship between Orme and his boyhood prairie buddy, Gordie Bannerm...
