By Lisa Bland, Publisher/Editor-in-Chief –
This summer marks the fifth year since I started running TheGreenGazette, and looking back to the summer of 2012, and 32 issues later, I can’t believe how much has happened and how quickly time has passed. It’s been a fast-paced and rewarding journey of being immersed in community, collaboration, stories, and the evolving narratives of the people, places, and issues in our region, and the larger world.
I often joke about each issue being a birth process—painful, transforming, exciting, and filled with unknowns. Somehow each issue makes it to press in time, and despite the challenges, the writers, designers, distributors, volunteers, technical support, advertisers, and behind the scenes GreenGazette team willingly climb back on the horse for the next ride through the changing seasons. It’s rewarding to work with so many great people, and despite a certain amount of grumbling due to late nights or missed deadlines, I’m still glad to be a part of a creative, determined collective that cares about each other and strives to do their part to make the world better.
Since 2012, TheGreenGazette has almost doubled in size from 20 to 36 pages, and publishes 40 + articles each issue. Many of our writers have been with us since the beginning and continue to offer wonderful stories about their inner thoughts, lives, and adventures. Advertising continues to increase as the paper becomes more visible, and we continue to print more issues, which are distributed throughout the Cariboo Region including Prince George, Quesnel, Bella Coola, the Chilcotin, Horsefly, Lac La Hache, 100 Mile House, and beyond. Our extensive website hosts a local calendar, a green collective of local businesses, and pages for each article cross-posted with Facebook throughout the time span of each issue. Each issue, we cover a Green Business Feature story to highlight a business in the Cariboo Region. To date we have published stories on over 30 businesses. It’s encouraging to experience TheGreenGazette growing, and to know that being ‘green’ isn’t as hard as it might seem.
This spring, on Earth Day, April 22, in collaboration with the local Cariboo-Chilcotin Conservation Society and supported by the Central Cariboo Arts and Culture Society, TheGreenGazette and friends hosted an Earth Night celebration and fundraiser with a fantastic line-up of entertainment, musicians, and generously donated silent auction items from local businesses. It was a beautiful evening made possible only through the efforts of a collective of friends and community volunteers, and it reminded me of the necessity of taking time out to celebrate and appreciate one another while we’re advocating for a better world.
Community is the place where things happen—and where our ideals are made real. There’s a lot happening here in the Cariboo, and the stories that people take the time to write represent just a tiny fraction of the stories that are out there. We can never know the difference our stories and words might make. I think of sharing our ideas and stories like planting seeds and we don’t know how others might be inspired or what can grow from sharing a part of our lives and inner worlds. Community can offer opportunities to learn, teach, and be seen. They can be the space where we return to when life gets too overwhelming and disconnected. In the places where we know one another by name, there is strength in diversity.
Each issue of TheGreenGazette is made possible because of all of us that collectively make a ‘we’—contributing articles and ideas, working behind the scenes to keep things running, helping to distribute, promoting businesses and services, staying engaged as a readership, and contributing support, encouragement, and collaboration. Thank you for your part in helping make our region diverse, vibrant, caring, and more sustainable. Collectively we make a difference and our voices together represent the world we want to create for the future.
TheGreenGazette has new ‘Green is the New Black’ T-shirts available through order via emailing info@thegreengazette.ca or on our website at www.thegreengazette.ca. What does the saying mean? We each have different ideas about it. With the BC election results just in as I write this, and a minority Liberal government with Greens holding the balance of power, we might just find out what it means!
