While I’m still not entirely sure what I think of Glacier’s Oct. 16 redesign of the Thompson Citizen’s website, I can say the “Most Read Popular Thompson News” is an interesting revelation. While most newspaper stories are usually considered the next day’s fish wrap, a few (very few) stand the test of time. So it is we learn that the most read and popular story at the moment in the online edition of the Thompson Citizen, “Vale Inco restructures senior management: Position of Manitoba Operations president abolished” (http://www.thompsoncitizen.net/news/thompson/vale-inco-restructures-senior-management-1.1360946) ran … well, more than five years ago actually on July 22, 2009, the month after the paper first went online. Don’t get me wrong: I think it is a heck of a story; after all I wrote it. Same for the third of the five “Most Read Popular Thompson News” stories today: “Canada’s most violent crime city: Thompson, Manitoba: Statistics Canada’s new rankings again paint a bleak picture (http://www.thompsoncitizen.net/news/thompson/canada-s-most-violent-crime-city-thompson-manitoba-1.1368767). I wrote that one also in July: it ran on July 22, 2011, more than three years ago. Rounding out the top five list in Number 2, 4 and 5 spots are three stories from last Wednesday’s Oct. 29 paper. Odd but interesting. I suspect the “Most Read Popular Thompson News” list will very soon undergo some tinkering in terms of algorithms or delivery and my old Vale and Stats Can stories will be relegated to virtual fish wrap. C’est la vie. It was fun to see them again so prominently displayed in a vertical bar on Nov. 3, 2014 down the right hand side of the Thompson Citizen’s home page.
And not to carp (well, at least not too much), but are there any readers who actually find the digital ISSUU digital publishing platform edition easier to read online than the old-fashioned Adobe PDF of the weekly paper? Maybe. Let me know if you’re one of them. I’d be interested to know how that’s working for you.
Oh. And that hypertext link at the bottom left of the home page to the Flin Flon Reminder (www.thereminder.ca), as one of the Thompson Citizen’s “sister papers.” Dead (the link, not the Reminder). Since about 2011 or even longer, if I recall correctly.
As for the main headshot or photo for someone appearing on the home page in the main story now in the new online version of the Thompson Citizen, think big, very big: Hello, Niki! That should make for some interesting pics and story choices to lead the home page as things unfold over on Commercial Place in the weeks ahead.
OK. I’ll stop. And dedicate this post to well-known raconteur Len Podbisky, a former Thompson Citizen reporter and former news director of Arctic Radio CHTM-610 AM, who wrote a very funny column intermittently, as both a staffer and freelancer, aptly named, “Tales from the Grumpy Old Men’s Club,” and the late Harold Everett Esson Kemp, who was the ripe old age of 93 when he died in 2011. Harold used to enrich and enliven the Page 4 editorial page in the Thompson Citizen from time to time with his letters to the editor.
I published Harold last letter to the editor on Dec. 1, 2010, and he was as blunt as ever. “Former Manitoba Operations Vale spokesman David Markham told me last June that the most recent information he had then was the mines here would close in 2028. Of course the life of the mines would be extended if any new discoveries were found. Diamond drilling underground is still being done. So far nothing new.
“Since I came here in 1967, nine mines have closed, some for lack of ore others due to content and prohibitive costs.
“For years now I have had general knowledge as to the life of these mines, maybe because I was a miner one time. When talking to Markham on this subject, I told him I was about to attend a meeting and advise the people the life of this mine is only till the year 2030 to 2035. It was then David corrected me by saying their estimate was 2028. His comment to me was, “Well, Harold, you weren’t out too much.
“Why bring this up! Because the mayor and others like Steve Ashton keeps talking about the great future for Thompson. UCN is a white elephant to begin with. Pick up your paper and you’ll read job ads for both campuses here and in The Pas looking for teachers and instructors. Another thing. Where are we to pick up 500 to 600 students to attend college when we don’t even have an industry here? Where is the tax money to be had? Down the line we’ll be lucky to have 4,000 to 5,000 people here. Looks to me Snow Lake is the place to be.”
Now, true enough, Harold was writing well before Vale’s “Thompson Foot Wall Deep Project,” at the north end of Thompson Mine, previously known as Thompson (1D), entered its current Front End Loading (FEL) 3 study stage, which looks at its feasibility, in Vale’s four-stage project development system, and may or may not amount to a big deal some day. But you’ve got to admire Harold’s directness and history may still prove him not far off on at least some of his observations. Time will tell.
As for Podbisky, long before he turned his pen to “Tales from the Grumpy Old Men’s Club,” he along with CBC Radio North Country host Mark Szyszlo, and now Winnipeg-based provincial civil servant Jim Stewart, were members of the boundary-pushing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Low Budget Trash Theatre triumvirate, from the original incarnation of Beer & Skits.
The original Beer & Skits, which had a long run at the Royal Canadian Legion’s Centennial Hall from the 1980s through the mid-1990s, was famous – or perhaps infamous – for taking on any number of sacred cows, including wickedly spot-on mimicking of former mayor Bill Comaskey, God rest his soul, or a monologue by Podbisky on just how aboriginal a certain local First Nations chief really was – while Comaskey and the chief were in the audience.
Unfortunately, it all ended rather badly in a legal debacle in the mid-1990s with a member of council – not Comaskey – among several people threatening defamation lawsuits.
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