Our neighbour and fellow community newspaper, THE EQUITY in Shawville, has been sold after 72 years in the hands of the Dickson family. The news conjures mixed emotions in this fellow newspaper publisher; I can almost feel the wrenching of the family’s collective heart from across the Gatineau Valley.

Charles Dickson, the outgoing publisher, and daughter, Sophie, the editor, are but two of a handful of Dicksons who have put their heart and souls into this important country broadsheet over three generations.

Before Charles, it was run for decades by his older brother, Ross (who also co-owned the now-defunct Ottawa Xpress and the alive-and-well Hill Times), and his then-wife, Heather. Ross had followed in the footsteps of his parents, David and Rosaleen – Rosaleen being a driving force in both the paper and the community.

Charles was raised in the building that houses THE EQUITY and its sister-business, Pontiac Printshop. As an infant, he got a first-hand view of all the operations from his seat suspended over his mother’s desk; his bedroom as a kid is now one of the upstairs offices.

His face barely masked the strain of contained emotion when he said to me, “You know what it’s like, I think, Nikki,” at a recent meeting of fellow newspaper publishers.

We’d both grown up in the family business. The newspaper office was our house for more than a decade when my parents started it when I was a year old. Decades later, I also rocked both my sons in bassinets set up beside my desk so I could get the paper out each week.

A newspaper that has been in the family for decades is not like any other business, and selling is never just a business transaction.

“It’s like a family member,” is how Charles put it to us fellow publishers that day. And he is so right. For those of us who take on these family legacies – a mantle that both weighs upon and buoys the soul – the job is to feed, nurture and care for these things that have an identity and a beating heart. While you create it each week, it creates you – it defines who you are and how you are seen by the community you serve. If you grew up in the business you later take over, it’s your personal history, and can feel like a sister or a son; it’s part of your family tree.

So, selling the newspaper can only feel like a heart-wrenching goodbye to a much-loved, sometimes hated, but mostly loved family member. Maybe it comes in the shape of a divorce, a final separation, where both parties agree that each will do better without the other.

Or maybe it’s like a send-off of a teen to university; the parents have done their job and now it’s their kid’s turn to launch their new life without them. The worst case, of course, involves a funeral, and happily, that is not THE EQUITY’s situation.

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Quite the opposite. It’s great news that the new owner, Jon Stewart, has a background in newspapers, the digital savvy to modernize and, importantly, the excitement and optimism to take on this local institution with plans to gain even more readers.

Congratulations to everyone at THE EQUITY, and thank you to the Dickson family for keeping this crucially important newspaper going for more than seven decades.

Nikki Mantell is the publisher of the Low Down to Hull and Back News, based in Wakefield, in which she published this article as an editorial on January 22, 2025