There are places where lots of people live close to each other but are not what you would call a community. Where people don’t even know who their neighbours are, let alone what is going on across town or up the road in a nearby village.
The Pontiac is not one of those places.
Tucked in between the foothills of the Laurentian Mountains and the Ottawa River, from Luskville to Rapides-des-Joachims, together the 20,000 or so people who live in this area are a community.
We go to school together, play sports together, and work alongside each other. We participate in each other’s community events, our families are interconnected, we rely on the same healthcare facilities, travel the same highway, vote in the same elections. Our fates are intertwined and our ability to face our challenges and seize our opportunities is greater because we do it together, not as 20,000 individuals but as one cohesive community.
One of the many things that help make us a community is a shared understanding of what is going on across our slice of Canada, the ideas being proposed, the initiatives being launched, the celebrations, the passings, and the aspirations of people throughout our extended family.
Community newspapers play an important role in keeping people in touch with each other, which is a big part of what transforms them from a group of strangers into a community.
Last year, THE EQUITY celebrated its 140th year of publication. In a world where many communities have lost their local newspapers, we felt that the survival of this one was something worth celebrating.
Because, when you lose a newspaper, you lose more than some words printed on a piece of paper. You lose the collective expression of who you are, you lose something that is at the core of your community’s identity and its cohesion.
Over recent years, the internet has transformed our daily lives in so many ways, not least how quickly and easily we are all able to gather and share information about the world in which we live. Increasingly, people who wish to stay informed prefer to do so through smartphones and other digital devices. We’ve seen a growth in the number of readers of THE EQUITY who subscribe to both the print and digital versions; more than a quarter of you choose only our digital version.
So, over the past year our team has been busy redesigning the online version of THE EQUITY in order to meet the changing needs and expectations of our readers. We are committed to bringing you the news, and we are expanding and improving the ways in which we do it.
Which is why, this week, we are pleased to be launching our new website, designed to offer an improved reading experience for our subscribers.
When you visit our website, you will see a new layout that we hope you’ll agree is a breeze to navigate and a pleasure to read. And we are now able to offer greater immediacy in the delivery of news, with two newsletters emailed out to subscribers each week. Soon we will be offering a new app to make reading THE EQUITY on your smartphone even easier. You will find free access to a calendar of upcoming community events. Subscribers will also be able to see original versions of past issues of THE EQUITY.
These are just a few of the initial improvements to our digital offerings which, frankly, would not have happened without the patient, collaborative support of Pontiac’s own digital guru, Jon Stewart of Calumet Media.
And not to worry! We’re still publishing THE EQUITY in printed form, just as we always have, and it is our hope that you will still be able to find a copy in your mailbox or the local shop for a long time to come.
But whether you read THE EQUITY in print or online, you’ll continue to find the history of this community folded into its pages, going back now more than 140 years.
And if you would like to help shape the community’s future, and secure the paper’s, we invite you to join us at www.theequity.ca.
Charles Dickson
