It's still all up to us: The 'North Frontenac' Turns 40

Jeff Green | Mar 17, 2011

Photo: Drawing by Angela Badour, then  grade 10 student at SLHS, who was a winner for the 500th edition drawing contest in 1988.

The first edition of the Frontenac News was nothing more than a short essay, printed on the second page of a single sheet of paper (It is reprinted below). It was a call to a public meeting to try and pull together the small communities in the former townships of Olden, Oso, Hinchinbrooke and Bedford.

One of the interesting things about the essay is that with a few changes in wording, much of it could have been written in March of 1981, 1991, 2001, or even today, in March 2011.

“What do the 2010s have to offer the Frontenac residents, after all? ‘Is it only crown land, nature reserves, pockets of government privilege, few services and spotty seasonal employment?’”

I could have written that last week.

And if a questionnaire were sent out to local residents about issues facing the local communities, recreation, environment (the word we now use for pollution), schools, roads, lack of industry and economic opportunity would be some of the answers.

In preparing this section to mark the 40th anniversary of the Frontenac News, I dug through many of the issues that are stored in our offices. The paper has expanded its scope; we now distribute over 9,000 copies each week to 22 communities in five amalgamated townships and three counties. Through our website, Frontenacnews.ca, 2000 people read our paper each week online from locations across the globe.

The special section that starts on page 8 includes a history of how the single sheet that was tacked up on the wall in stores around what is now Central Frontenac has continued on, as a not-for-profit entity for 30 years and a private business for the past 10 years. We will chronicle the struggles of the newspaper and the communities it serves and look at how some of the institutions we cherish today were built. We will also look at our plans for the future.

Ultimately what the Frontenac News is still about is communication. Our job is to let people know what is going on here, not in Toronto or Ottawa or Kingston or Belleville or Napanee. There are lots of 'media outlets' that deliver information from the perspective of those centres. We are the only one that is based right here, and is concerned only with the issues of the rural people and communities where we distribute the paper.

And as that first little essay said it so well in 1971, it is really up to us to build our own communities and the broader community that is defined by The Frontenac News. There is still a lack of economic development in our region; the retail sector has weakened considerably over the past 40 years; and most people drive to cities for work. But there are also opportunities in our region that simply were not there in 1971. People can live good lives, feed their families, even accumulate wealth, and still go out of their houses and take a walk in the woods or put a canoe in the water without having to go anywhere.

The Frontenac News chronicles the joy and pain of life in the 20 communities with our weekly paper. And somehow, through the support of the businesses, the municipalities and our readers, enough advertising revenue comes in each week to enable us to send the paper to every mail box in those communities and every computer as well.