Last week I made the difficult decision to close our branch office in Drayton.
In its heyday, the Drayton office was the production facility for all of our Newspapers. This was back when the Drift Inn was about the only game in town, Cherrey’s Garage sold Allis Chalmers tractors on the main street and a yard full of buses sat at Ellis Bus Lines on the way into town from Goldstone.
This was also back in time before amalgamation, when Peel, Maryborough and Drayton were separate entities with very different personalities.
What they all had in common was a little paper in Drayton called The Community News. Those were good times.
Reporters were able to dash in and out of the office between production chores and community correspondents filed reports on the comings and goings of neighbours and families.
The charm of those times was a snapshot of living in rural, small village Ontario. Many of those old notes were handwritten and either picked up or dropped off at the local office for typesetting. Email and the fact most people have a computer or smartphone to share information, makes a storefront in a small town not a necessity.
Today is good too, it is just different.
Just as smaller stores have given way to larger stores and gas stations aren’t on every corner, the way people shop and do business has changed.
These changes have been chronicled over the years, with columnists lamenting the losses of these institutions. Granted we use the term institution very loosely, but along the way, places where people met regularly and socialized qualified as such. Change is something eventually accepted, albeit sometimes reluctantly.
One fact, however, remains: communities and residents are resilient.
While our preference would have been to continue avoiding a decision, the Community News office closure, from a dollars and cents perspective, was long overdue. Strong sentimental ties kept it open all these years as businesses came and went. But latterly, the spread between revenue and costs became too disparate, forcing this decision.
And to be very clear, when dollars and cents are mentioned, it hasn’t been a case of not making profit – in its current form, our parent company (The Wellington Advertiser) subsidized The Community News tens of thousands of dollars this past year alone.
This decision to close the office and find more cost effective means did result in a lost job and there will be a transition period as we try to make the best use of resources. Caroline Sealey did a fine job there and we thank her for that.
The good News though, is we are still committed to publishing The Community News.
We will require the help of residents and the continued support of the business community. Ads will continue to be received by email and the office number will remain the same.
We are advertising for a freelancer in the Mapleton area, but are also asking residents to help us help them by sending in News and photo submissions whenever possible.
With your support, we are confident The Community News will continue to proudly serve the Mapleton community.
