the broken typewriter

Two more days until the end of 2024! Meanwhile, the countdown continues with the most popular articles of 2024 and those taking second and third place.

In third place is another topic that a lot of rural people were concerned about, while the story which took second place is a fabulous good news story for Fort St. John and the North Peace. In fact, it was one of my favourite pieces of local news for the year.

#3 – Master Plan will shape the future of the North Peace Fall Fair

The North Peace Fall Fair is likely the most well-attended event in the region, with some 10,000 people attending every August. Located 20 minutes north of Fort St. John in North Pine, the 43 acres of Fall Fair grounds have made up the North Peace Regional Park since 1979, although virtually no one refers to the site by its official name. A valued community event for 76 years, the Fall Fair has unfortunately had some difficulties in recent years due to things like changes in the building code, and the deterioration of the older buildings.

Operated by the North Peace Fall Fair Society under an agreement with the Peace River Regional District, until recently the park has hosted not only the annual Fall Fair, but 4-H Achievement Days and countless weddings, reunions, and other gatherings.

For the past year, Area B director Jordan Kealy says he’s been urging the PRRD Board of Directors to start treating the Fall Fair grounds like the regional park that it is.

“They have to make a decision as to where it’s going to go because it’s under the PRRD’s ownership and control,” Kealy said.

To that end, the PRRD has launched a plan to shape the future of the North Peace Regional Park by beginning work to develop a master plan.

The need to make some kind of plan for the future of the park and the fair became clear in recent years.

In 2021, the Society wanted to upgrade the Adeline Kelly building to create a communal kitchen and add washrooms. Upon investigation by the PRRD’s building department, the regional district and the Fall Fair Society learned that the building wasn’t built to a public occupancy state. It has since been brought up to farm standards for storage, through funding from Area B.

Following the news about the Adeline Kelly Building, the PRRD Board resolved to have all the buildings on the property assessed, and the results were presented to the board in June 2023. The report found that virtually every building needed repairs and upgrades, for safety reasons.

“It’s very difficult when you have some really, really old buildings that don’t adhere to modern codes,” said Kealy.

Follow this link to continue reading #3

#2 – Ma Murray’s dream lives on: AHN is BACK!

Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes, Fort St. John’s beloved Alaska Highway News is back in our community once again.

When Glacier Media shut the doors of the Alaska Highway News in October 2023, after 80 years of bringing local news to Fort St. John and surrounding area, the community and AHN staff alike were heartbroken. Even though some twenty years have lapsed since my time at the AHN, I was sad to see the paper I had once poured my heart and soul into vanish.

Enter Todd Buck. With only two years reporting experience under his belt, he was unwilling to give up the writing career he loved and the skills he’d honed under the tutelage of former managing editor Matt Prepost.

So, he came up a with a plan.

Buck formed his own media company and purchased the name and masthead from Glacier Media just before Christmas 2023. Since then, the heavy-equipment-operator-turned-reporter-turned-publisher has been working hard to re-vamp and re-launch the Alaska Highway News. He’s been collaborating with Rob Brown, former managing editor of the Dawson Creek Mirror and Trent Ernst, publisher of Tumber Ridgelines to get his enterprise off the ground. Co-incidentally, Brown also started his own community paper in Dawson Creek following the shutdown of the Mirror in October.

The reborn AHN is a bit different than the old. Buck has gone with a tabloid format rather than the previous broadsheet – like the Northern Horizon or if you remember it, The Northerner. The first edition is 8-pages long and according to the AHN’s website will be published bi-weekly initially. Buck aims for the paper to become a weekly, but for now, 4,000 copies of the AHN can be found twice a month at 20 newspaper boxes around town.

Follow this link to continue reading #2

Tomorrow is the day. Tomorrow, December 30, 2024 I’ll repost the #1 most read and shared Broken Typewriter article of 2024! And then perhaps an Editorial on 31^st. Thanks so much for reading and taking this trip down memory lane with me this past week.