“Clare would do a great deal better in class if she simply controlled her imagination.”
Looking back across the decades that I have been a journalist, perhaps my fate was sealed when these words were written by an elementary school teacher to my parents.
My desire to understand, to ask questions, to ferret out information, to imagine the shape of a story, a life, an experience is what eventually landed me in Pique’s editor chair.
I had, in fact, “retired” from journalism after two decades-plus at The Province newspaper in Vancouver covering everything from politics to crime to education to courts, and finally the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games when I agreed to become editor at Pique.
What would it be like? Whose stories would I get to share? How can I keep truth alive in my community?, I wondered when Pique’s then-owner and editor Bob Barnett offered the chair to me.
And suddenly instead of retiring, I was doing a job that took every ounce of my imagination, creativity, energy and passion for words, people and community.
I never imagined I’d still be doing it 11 years later.
But, it’s time to pass the editor’s chair to a new generation at Pique, and I am so excited for you to welcome longtime council reporter, multi-award-winning reporter and assistant editor Braden Dupuis into the position.
This will be my last editorial, though I have no intention of leaving the craft and intend to continue writing.
I’ve spent months thinking about what to say in this space this week. I’ve put pen to paper (metaphorically speaking) a hundred times… but somehow I have both too much and too little to say about the life-changing time I have spent with the people of Pique and Whistler, too. So here I am, right on deadline, scrambling some thoughts together—my favourite place to be.
I can remember my first week at work when the story broke about the cull of the sled dogs in the Soo Valley, north of Whistler. Coming straight from a hard-news daily, this story caused a paradigm shift for me—I had to tell the story, but it had to be Whistler’s story.
And for more than a decade, that is what Pique has endeavoured to do: tell the stories of the people, the issues and the community that is our home.
There are hundreds of stories I am proud of in Pique—hundreds. But I know that every single one of them would never have happened if readers had not shared what they had to say with us, and if Pique’s talented and dedicated reporters hadn’t taken the time to listen and research and put the truth out there. I am humbled by the talent of Pique’s writers and our amazing creative heart, Jon Parris.
Across the years I have cribbed many lessons from them all.
These last years with COVID-19, all the climate-change disaster events and the meteoric rise of the internet have meant those in the newsroom can never disconnect. This is now a 24/7 career, and readers expect immediate, accurate information all the time—and this at a time when people cannot even seem to agree on a common set of facts to describe the truth of our lives. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t totally exhausting, especially with a smaller newsroom.
Pique’s newsroom strives to meet its obligations to the public, but it is a constant battle against click-baiters and those who outright lie.
In this daily reality I sometimes find myself chuckling when I recall that I used to type on an electric typewriter and produce carbon copies for the editors and typesetters, while now I spend most of my time managing my corner of the media in what feels like a multiverse.
But the changes have not touched the essence of what we do at Pique. We are storytellers, and our role is to inform our community, act as a watchdog on institutions and governments and report to you with speed, accuracy and grace.
And I know that this is what will continue to happen as I step down as editor.
Some thanks are owed: First and foremost to my husband Steven who understood from the start my passion for journalism and supported me year in and year out to this day; my amazing kids Kayley and Matthew who had to learn self-sufficiency early, and often found themselves dragged around to the sites of breaking news; creative genius Jon Parris who puts up with my constant literal interpretations of our cover art and Pique’s imaginative production team; publisher Sarah Strother who is so much more than “my boss”—she is the heart of the paper; to my news family Braden, Brandon Barrett, Alyssa Noel, Megan Lalonde and Harrison Brooks—you are the centre of Pique’s universe; to all the columnists who constantly push me to look at things in new ways (Max—who helped me to be fearless in seeking the truth despite the discomfort it can cause); to the amazing sales team; to all those who support us with advertising and contributions—I don’t know where we would be without you—and huge thanks to those who share their stories, we wouldn’t exist without you.
