What an incredible experience | The Stratford Beacon Herald

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Let me think back to the decades I spent as a columnist for the Tillsonburg News and what is now the Norfolk & Tillsonburg News.

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When I was new to Tillsonburg, I joined the Tillsonburg Little Theatre and played two shows before the group disbanded in 1978-79. Fortunately, the “theatre” itself was like a phoenix and soon rose from the ashes under the name Theatre Tillsonburg. Our first show was in the fall of 1981.

I don’t know who came up with the idea of ​​writing a weekly column about the new group, maybe Bill Pratt had a hand in it, but I helped Maureen Sawaya and Albert Verzyl write a weekly article about theater to promote our new group. Albert and Maureen eventually dropped out and I got the weekly column under The World is a Stage.

It was difficult to write about one group or topic every week, so I started inserting articles about other things I was doing – volunteering at the Annandale House restoration, wildlife rehabilitation and other events I volunteered at or attended, and I got permission to write about whatever I wanted. I kept writing because it was fun and people liked my sense of humor.

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What a great experience it was to write for the newspaper. I would go on holiday and write about something interesting that had happened and then a week later I couldn’t understand how people knew I was gone. My memory was bad then too.

Sometimes I would write an article and someone would be upset. We would go over it so I knew exactly what had upset them, only to find that I hadn’t written the words they remembered… and then they would say they had “read between the lines.” So I would write an article asking the public not to read between the lines and put words in my mouth. I have enough trouble with my own words.

Being a curious person, I like to read, learn about a wide variety of subjects and share the information. So I went through my files to see what I wrote about in 2004, 20 years ago. What a mishmash of topics, like… bras and brainworms, elections, D-Day, first aid courses, the Alpha course and Down Home Country Christmas.

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In an article about downtown beautification, I apparently taught a lesson about not using interlocking bricks to decorate and mark pedestrian walkways across the street and sidewalks. The bricks, which are constantly shifting in the winter, become a tripping hazard for people with canes and crutches, ruin high heels, and become a problem when shoveling and clearing snow. Having been in a wheelchair myself, I can attest that anything with wheels, from strollers to seniors with walkers or people in wheelchairs, gets jolted by the wheels clattering and clattering over the bricks. Not pretty.

I’ve covered the Olympics, the 1812 revival of Backus Mill, colds, the Extravaganza (a fundraiser for the hospital), Thanksgiving, foster care for orphaned wild animals, Museum Month, Oxford County Open Doors, the Senior Center Singers, my big musical – Esther the Concubine Queen – and topics like the meaning of life, toilets, and shows at Theatre Tillsonburg.

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I always felt sorry for my editors, although their job certainly got easier when I got a computer with spelling and grammar checkers. I got a B in spelling at school, and the only thing I can remember doing wrong in grammar is an inappropriate participle construction. I always wrote the way I talk to people, and fortunately readers liked that. If I’d ever thought I’d be a columnist, or write history books, etc., I might have taken a writing course!

A friend calculated how many columns I wrote for the News: “You wrote for 42.5 years, 52 columns a year (approximately), that would be over 2,200 columns! Plus the odd extra news story or column.” Well, that blew my mind. I enjoyed sharing my research on the Tillson family and the pioneers living at Pioneer Graveyard and much more.

Tillsonburg is an amazing town with many stories, events and wonderful people – past and present – and it has been a privilege to share it with you. Thank you for reading.

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