Thinking About The Long Haul In A New Year

Jeff Green | Jan 11, 2023

There is a sense that a new year brings new opportunities, and while we all inevitably slip back into the same patterns of work by mid January, it is important to at least note where we have come from and how we can do things just a little differently, or with a different focus, every year.

It always feels like we see more people pass, in the run-up to the end of the year and in the first days of the new year, and statistics bear this out as well. More people die on New Year's Day than on any other day of the year, and January has been the deadliest month of the year in Canada in most of the last ten years, with December being the second.

The death notices that we receive at the Frontenac News start to pile up. By the time the first paper of the new year comes out, there is always a pretty full page. Maybe it is because our normal flow of emails slows down over the holidays, but it seems that notices from funeral homes, and families of people who have just died, are the only emails that we get between Christmas and New Years.

This year was no different. Some were from people who we knew were ill, and some seemed to come as a surprise, but all are a reminder that life has an end for all of us.

The death of Lee Anna White just before her 108th birthday should not have been a surprise. She had lived a very long, productive life. But after living on her own for 107 years, her health was failing last year, and it was a relief to her family and neighbours when Lee Anna, stubborn as she was, agreed to move into Pine Meadow Nursing Home last winter, where she could receive care that she needed.

What a marathon her life was and what changes there have been in the way people live in North Frontenac, from the isolation and deprivation of her youth.

We have a couple of other stories recounted this week that deal with marathon efforts; including the turnover and re-opening of a restaurant in Sharbot Lake that Brad Long thought would take three months, but has taken 5 times as long.

And for us at the Frontenac News, the two-week break from publishing each year has become a marker of sorts of the fact that publishing the Frontenac News each week is also something like a marathon.

So, running stories about marathon efforts seems appropriate for the first edition of the year, I think, and we hope to keep telling those stories and others, in print and digital form, for years to come.

This brings us to what has become an annual request for voluntary donations to the paper, what we call a voluntary subscription for a product that we give away each week.

We calculated that it costs about $35 per year (all of our costs are rising, printing being the most radical increase this year) including, printing, admin, and delivery costs to send a newspaper to each of the 12,000+ households where we send the Frontenac News to each week.

Advertisers pay those costs, and the best way for readers to support the paper is to read the paper and to patronise the local businesses that advertise in the paper, and those that don’t advertise in the paper as well, because the stronger the local business community is, the stronger all of us local businesses are.

And, for those who can afford to, and want to, we encourage you to pay for a voluntary subscription to help us cover costs. Some people provide the $35 it costs for their weekly paper, some pay more to cover for others who can’t afford to help, and some provide lump sum donations for various amounts. All sponsorships are welcome, and for every one we offer a free classified ad, at any time during the year, as a thank you.

We thank our readers for supporting us, and are committed to continuing to provide a mix of information about local events and politics, and stories about friends, neighbours and enterprises in our diverse but connected communities, in 2023 and beyond.