Today we published a very special feature for all of us here on the North Shore, celebrating 50 years of community news publishing.
For the past 50 years we here at the News have toiled to tell your stories. We have run your birth announcements and obituaries. We have celebrated personal and community milestones, birthdays, engagements, many happy stories and many that were not.
We have worked hard every week to listen to your stories and tell them in the pages of our paper (and of course now on our flourishing website). Our goal has always been to reflect our community’s views and news in an unbiased and trusted way. We have stirred debate and we have hosted forum.
Over these 50 years we have chronicled much change in our community and our world. We continue to do so every day with the same care, integrity and diligence we always have. We look forward to staying on that course, in print and via all the digital channels, for many, many years to come.
In the special edition published today, and also available online, we take a look back at some of those events and memories. We reflect on where we have come from and where we are headed and, most importantly, we celebrate our role in our great community and all of our current team and vast cast of alumni, and the work they have accomplished. Just as importantly, we celebrate our community’s history and the roles that so many of you have played in helping to build such a resilient, caring, welcoming, inclusive and incredibly vibrant community.
My own story with the NS News started in the year of our founding, 1969.
I was a newspaper carrier for the Citizen newspaper in West Vancouver when Peter Speck’s North Shore Shopper came along and soon thereafter put me out of my first job, as the Citizen went out of business. After a stint as a zone manager for the Penny Saver in Victoria during my university years, I took a hiatus from the newspaper business until July 1991.
That year I spotted an employment ad in the North Shore News for an advertising representative. Never did I imagine that fateful review of our classified pages would lead to a significant turn in my career path. After eight months in classifieds I had the opportunity to step into the position of retail advertising manager with the News where I remained, through some pretty interesting years, until 1997.
In 1997 I bade farewell to Peter Speck and the troops at the News and set out to make my own mark with a start-up paper, the Coast Reporter, on B.C.’s Sunshine Coast. Over the ensuing years, the Coast Reporter was sold to Glacier Media and they kept me on to oversee their many newspaper holdings across Western Canada.
In 2011 we came full circle with Glacier buying the North Shore News (and a number of other Lower Mainland papers), and I was once again involved with my hometown paper. In 2015 I took over the helm at the North Shore News as only the third publisher in its colourful history. It has been my pleasure and privilege to serve our North Shore communities since then and likely for many years into the future.
We’ve still got so many stories to tell, but in these pages you’ll find many of our favourites from the past 50 years. So get a cup of coffee (tea or whatever your choice is) and settle in for a great read, great memories and wonderful reflections and musings on our history, together here on the North Shore. We hope you enjoy the read!
Peter Kvarnstrom is the publisher of the North Shore News. This story was included in our 50th Anniversary Issue, published Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2019. Click here for more stories from this special edition of the North Shore News.
