The real heroes of community remain unsung –
Media consumed by profile as end-all

If an elected official here in Muskoka, gets a lump on his or her arse, it’s front page potential. Bump the fire shot and the accident flick to page thirty. Kill the drug-bust piece. Okay, it’s a stretch but it’s fair to say, there’s an obsession with politics and I don’t know why. As a writer and an historian, who cut his teeth on the local news beat, it is ridiculous what makes the news pages these days, and what is missed because investigative reporting apparently takes a staffer’s time away from the really good stuff, like covering the drier than dry local council meeting.
It’s not just a local preoccupation. It’s a national madness. Publishers and the movers and shakers of the electronic and print media believe we thrive on the latest news of a breaking boil on a famous person’s hindy, or anything else of a particularly personal, intimate nature we don’t need to know. It’s not the case readers are totally disinterested in the political gains and folly affecting their country, they just don’t need “a fix” of “what are the politicians doing today,” every day! Media barons seem to be more determined to satisfy their own agendas, their own sense of life’s truly important moments, rather than truly knowing or caring what the audience wants. I’d call it force feeding but the “out” here is, I can opt to switch channels and refuse to buy the subject publication. I have done this in my home district. More Canadians, I think, than ever, are simply employing remote control options, channel hopping, and refusing to spend hard earned money on news publications full of obsessive government watching.
It’s killing off readership from flaming sea to sea. The big wheels of local, provincial and national government and the weighty entourage of lobbyists, and sundry other bum kissers, are incredibly unworthy of the news coverage they receive. It is however, what they expect. Rather, demand of the media!
When I began working as a junior reporter for a one-horse paper, it was about politics. I mean the world evolved around local municipal councilors, and whenever a local provincial or federal member broke wind, “this could be a story!” I had to drop everything else when a politician was doing something interesting in our region. Gads, politician and interesting in the same sentence. For the dullards I worked for, yes indeed, politics was the end-all of a good week’s paper. The reality that our circulation sucked and most people bought the paper for the ads, the classifieds and to read about who of the citizenry had passed, never, never sunk into management’s power-protocol obsession. The politicians and the upper echelon of the local business community, including every prominent club member, was THE COMMUNITY, if like me, you read between the bulging lines of shameful propaganda.
Whenever I was approached to abandon a news story for a really, really good business feature (cause there was an advert hanging in the balance), I used to first of all cringe (that the manager found my hiding spot), and secondly, being forced to shelve real news for a staged story about a local business improvement initiative; one that frankly would only have been news if one of the blokes I’d been chatting with had spontaneously combusted before the ribbon cutting ceremony. My masters told me that parading the good graces of local business through the ink of hard and important community news, was of course, “good business.” They never seemed embarrassed to let me know my pay envelope hinged on my prowess at “good” reporting. Funny, as editor I always thought it was shilling for the almighty buck. Needing remuneration now and again, to support “a” lifestyle, well, I prostituted myself as a news-hound, by traipsing after every non-story to make the paper a tad more profitable. It’s with some modest sense of pride that I can report to you that I didn’t do grip and grin photos or staged biographical pieces of friends and business “fuss-free.” I’d put up such a stink they’d give the story to the new reporter or the advertising rep. who was cut from the same, “good news sells ads” cloth.
What was happening to me through my first decade in the local news gathering business, is that I paralleled newspaper work with the research projects of the historian. The eventual intersection of careers was the ultimate disaster. I could not resolve in conscience, the manipulations of newspaper management to portray the community as they saw fit! They had no right to create history in their own likeness, and I had a lot of fights with my superiors to make that point stick. In the end-run it was a lot easier to get rid of the activist-historian, than take their responsibilities beyond shilling for dollars. I was horrified by what misrepresentations of past and present were getting into print on a weekly basis that was plain and simply untrue on the wider historical scale. The problem I identified to other local historians as well, was that newspaper accounts were being used as source material by many other authors as absolute record. Even high school students conducting research projects, were using unreliable newspaper accounts as primary sources and not cross referencing in the spirit of investigation. There were a number of books of local history composed in this fashion, not based on accurate historical record but on a newspaper’s account of what happened. Having been in the reporting business for some time, it’s pretty much unavoidable with reduced staff members, particularly proof readers, to run a week or daily edition without error. Time and again these errors and inaccurate stories find their way into mainstream historical record. Tell me that this isn’t a huge problem. I tried many times, via columns I wrote as an independent in the late 1990’s, to remind folks that history is more than what the media chooses to print or broadcast, and that citizens need to play a more active role in correcting not only inaccuracies with facts but misinterpretations generally. I don’t expect everyone who reads this to believe my side of the story. For God’s sake “cross reference.” What I worry about locally is that future historians may decide to take the media accounts as the fundamental record of our times, and this quite honestly, would be a gross disservice to all stakeholders in our communities.
As a footnote to this, when I wrote the history of Bracebridge and Muskoka Lakes Secondary School, on the occasion of their 75th anniversary (in 2000), I begged the forgiveness of the readership from the early pages of the text, offering a preamble apology for any errors published within, because of the short time period we had to come up with the full text. I asked anyone who had found errors to notify me, in order to correct this for secondary printings. There were changes made. I’m still on the job to handle further revisions. I don’t give up on a project just because the publication is in the public domain. An historian worth his or her salt, is always open to new, revealing information and insights.
You see, in my admittedly prejudicial overview, politicians and the local self proclaimers, are the last folks I’d look at as being history makers. I wrote a column about ten years ago, for the local press that made this point very clear. Boy did I tingle some raw nerve endings. The history makers in our communities, across this country, are the ones who work all day, at jobs without particularly high profile, tending the wants and needs of a day-in-the-life community; the baker, plumber, teacher, crossing guard, postal clerk, mechanic, restaurant staff, police officer, and graphic artist. I am far more impressed and interested by the way these people, these unsung “working stiff” heroes, keep our communities vibrant than the way local politicians, the carry-on celebrities, grip and grin all over God’s half acre, happily oblivious to the “real” stuff that makes a “real” town work. I have marveled at these community builders since I began pounding the beat as a reporter. I was much keener to pen a story about a group of church volunteers fundraising to help support a family in need, or an international aid initiative, than sitting all evening at a local council meeting getting wind burn from a lot of posturing blow-hards; ones who had long since lost the connection with old fashioned, dynamic-in-its-own-way “commonplace”.
I have always been an outcast amongst my newsie peers, and dismissed as “the radical element amongst us,” from associate historians, who prefer to distance themselves from any one who dares disrespect the masters of Oz. I’ve been shunned by a lot of celebrity organizations because I don’t pucker at their beck and call. The only way for me to get a local historical award is if I stole it off the shelf before it was presented to someone else. Truth is, and it may just be sour grapes, but it is personal policy, that I would refuse any award in the region of local history, if I didn’t approve of the presenter. Call me old fashioned, and a stubborn old fart but I’ve never been impressed by awards or being asked to join organizations…..as Woody Allen once said, I wouldn’t belong to any club (group, association) that would have a guy like me for a member.
The history makers of Muskoka (and in your community) began with the first settlers who broke through the wilderness to build those inaugural homesteads. They are the good folks who have toiled and toiled and toiled at their respective tasks, to build homes, business and industry, from the ground up over these tumultuous decades, defying the climate, the economy, the politics of the day. They are the people who didn’t have time to give interviews to the local press because they were too busy community building. They are the people who literally broke their backs, with nary a mention of credit, to build that first foundation of settlement, and have carried on ever since, respecting both how it began and how it should continue. These are people who baked the bread, taught the young their lessons, built the mainstreet a brick at a time, laid out the roads, applied the paving, stocked the shelve of the variety store, and kept the town clock going for all these years…. for all our benefit.
Whenever I commence a retelling of history, I begin humbly and end humbly, just as a majority of our community builders operated one day upon the next, with little expectation of being given any additional recognition, for what was a basic responsibility of good citizenship. They invested their entire lives in the enterprise of making good and worthy centers deserving to be called “home towns.” When you flip through the pages of some local published histories, you must remember that these folks didn’t take the time to pose for pictures, or cut ribbons, or attend social galas with the upper echelon of society. That’s what the news cameras missed. That’s where historical record was distorted. The camera wasn’t capturing the single parent asleep in an armchair after a day of working in the trenches; having made a trip to the arena for a youngster’s practice, and then having a stint at the dinner table figuring out what bills get paid this month, and what are to be held over for another payday.
Publishers will claim it is necessary to profile the leaders of our community. I won’t disagree. What I will tell them however, as an historian, is that by the turn-out of voters at the last municipal election, as related to the population of our region, life doesn’t begin or end with the political wing of the great feathered bird.
I have known, and still know local politicians who have no interest in doing anything but the job of administering to the well being of our communities. Others can’t wait for the next photo-op to get onto yet another published page. This historian has never been impressed with those who get into politics for kicks and otherwise self indulgence. And while it was true that in my newspaper days I was forced to follow local politics, as if the mission to uncover the holy grail itself, I don’t perform lip puckers as an independent local historian. It bothers a lot of powerful community leaders out there but I have a mandate to serve. For every arena custodian, elevator repair-person, baker and candlestick maker, who contributes to community life and times by hard work and many kindnesses bestowed, I’m their historian.
I do not credit Muskoka politicians as the sole providers of community prosperity even though they may believe they’ve turned water into wine. History itself shows that our successes were created by co-operation and mutual interest in stable, prospering communities with a future dynamic to grow and mature. All the propaganda aside, there is clear, undeniable evidence that accomplishment came with back-breaking labor. Take for example the ground breaking ceremonies for the latest, allegedly greatest development to grace our landscape. There they all are, as if it is the most important image in history. The celebrity photo op! If I manned that camera lens, I’d be focusing on the construction worker up to her arse in mud, who is setting the forms for that all-important foundation, because if she doesn’t do the job perfect, it will all come tumbling down. Now if a politician was expected to manufacture policy and directives with such attention to detail, think of the wonderful possibilities it would net us in lasting community improvement.
The point of this rather scathing attack on the media preoccupation with politicians and alleged other important people, is that there is a serious perception problem between what is considered news by the general citizenry, and what is being force-fed upon readers disinterested to tears about ceremonial snap shots and non-news profiles of sundry other big shots. If publishers want to reflect the true nature of the communities they represent, they need to ask the public, the readers, what they want to know about in their home town…..and care a lot less about what advertisers and politicians believe are the themes of the day.
I’m the pain in the ass historian signing off….thanks so much for reading this blog opinion.