Ideas - Why a small town newspaper is thriving in a declining industry

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

Need a babysitter? Phone Cindy. That's just one of the ads in The Inverness Oran, a small town newspaper in Cape Breton with a circulation of 3,000. For almost 50 years, the paper has kept the community updated on local news, many opinions, and letters to the editor. IDEAS offers a snapshot of what people are talking about in Inverness County, what newspapers used to be, and why the family-owned paper is stronger than ever.

How are Canadians bracing for a full-on trade war? Without U.S. buy-in, can Canada really help Ukraine? And is Canadian patriotism messing with conservative strategy? We explore questions like these on Power and Politics, CBC's only political daily. I'm David Cochran. I speak to the key players in the political stories everyone is talking about. You'll hear from those who've got the power, those who want it, and those affected most by it. You can find Power in Politics wherever you get your podcasts,

including YouTube. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayad. When was the last time you picked up an actual printed newspaper? Don't we all just get our news online, even if it does have a headline that says Vancouver Sun or the Winnipeg Free Press or the Globe and Mail? The actual printed newspaper seems very much like a relic of a bygone era, inefficient and environmentally suspect. An endangered species.

And that's just the big newspapers, serving big cities or at least trying for a wider national scope. Then there are the smaller community newspapers, even more endangered, you'd think. The Flynn-Flawn Reminder, The Elmira Observer, The Cochrane Times Post.

In my mind, we joined each community. We joined the people. Even in the early days, if someone passed away, I would go and visit them and I would get their obituary because they wanted it in the paper. Most community newspapers these days are free. But there are about 30 or so in Canada that people are still happy to pay for, that still manage to serve their subscribers with a mix of local news, letters to the editor, opinion pieces, sports, births, deaths and marriages, the goings on at local council meetings, the potholes on the road. We had a philosophy that said no story was either too big or too small to do.

I think that was our strength and it was also not only to reflect the county, but we also promoted the county. We fought for it. Snowmobilers cheat death in Highland snowstorm. That was a recent headline from the Inverness Oran, a small family-run newspaper on the west coast of Cape Breton Island, circulation 3300. The Oran is a family-run newspaper, started in 1976 by Rankin and Eleanor McDonald

and joined these days by daughters April and Kelly. Ideas producer Philip Coulter went to Inverness to find out what makes the Oran tick, what makes a small community newspaper printed on actual paper work in the 21st century. Here's Philip Coulter's documentary. We're calling it The Song of Inverness. Anyone with business at the Inverness Oran walks in from the street, right into the newsroom. If you're looking for the editor, Rankin MacDonald, that's his desk over there on the left. He's got his back to the wall. A man can never be too safe.

What have you got here on the wall behind you? Everybody's got posters up. There's a map of the world. There's a Star Trek poster. What else? What's that underneath? That's the greatest lead-in in the world. Stanley Ketchal was twenty-four years old when he was fatally shot in the back by the common-law husband of that lady who was cooking him breakfast.

Isn't that incredible? It tells you the whole story right there, right? And you want to go on and read it. Absolutely. Of course I want to go on and read it. Fatally shot in the back by the common law husband of the lady that was cooking him breakfast. As Rankin says, a great lead in. Rankin would know.

A newspaper editor has to know these things. The basic stock in trade of getting people to buy your newspaper, to read stories like that. Rankin is one half of Rankin and Eleanor MacDonald, the owners of the Inverness Oran. I'm Rankin MacDonald. I'm the owner-editor of the Inverness Oran. Eleanor MacDonald, owner, and I am basically the general manager and publisher of the Oran. So first of all I guess we have to figure out what is the Inverness Oran? Well Oran is a Gaelic word meaning song, so it's the song of Inverness, that's who we are.

On the table here in front of us Rankin there's a copy of the paper. Can you describe what it is we're looking at? What is this? You're looking at what we used to call the blue book. Now it was an eight and a half by fourteen sheets of paper, and that was the horn. Every week we'd get together, we'd lay it out, and we'd finish about two in the morning and then the women would come in in the morning, the girls we used to call them, and staple it together and then we'd go to the streets, right? It was labor intensively. Even in them days, this hair was more centered on Inverness and area, but as each week went by, like we'd get a call from St. Malbel, I wanted you to come out here and do a story. Or Marguerite would say, why

don't you come out here and do a story? Then we got to thinking, all right, we're gonna do the county. And we said, okay, we're gonna cover Inverness County. And then the circulation went crazy and our jobs tripled. But we had a philosophy that said no story was either too big or too small to do. I think that was our strength. There's no story that we won't do away. And it was also not only to reflect the county, but we also promoted the county. We fought for it. I want to pick up on this paper that we're looking at here, Eleanor. What's on the cover?

This is just Inverness. Our pipers, and our pipe band, our mines, and our people. And we live on the water. So this is Inverness. We live on the water and these are our people. And up on top there, there's a little kind of couple of scales of music and it's got the name of the paper paper Oran Inverness Spelt in Scots Gaelic. Yes, right. Although you pronounce it in bernice in bernice. Yes, and then you Inverness b h is pronounced V. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah and underneath it is the date. What's the date August 13th?

1976 volume one number 19 20 cents 20 cents 13th, 1976, Volume 1, Number 19. Twenty cents, twenty cents. That's what it cost. It's twenty cents. As Eleanor says, this early copy of the Oran has got that little bit of music on the cover. There's a sketch of a Highlander in profile, and behind him, a woman with a bundle on her shoulder. There's a skiff being pushed out to sea, and in the background, an old fashioned sailing ship. Maybe these are Scots people leaving for Canada.

Inside, the paper in many ways is the same paper we'd see today, a mixture of news and notices. The host band for the Inverness Highland Festival, the Inverness Bonnie Bray Pipe Band will lead a massed band parade through the streets of Inverness at approximately one o'clock. And Burt's Born, a Baby Girl to Mr. and Mrs. Gordon McLean from Maple Street, August 12th. All the things that are still in the newspaper today, including editorials. What have you got there? What's in front of us?

This is one of the things I did. This is sort of an example of an editorial. Do you want to read a little bit of it? Okay. Okay. Nothing Gets Done, editorial by Rankin McDonald. Part of the job of a newspaper editor is to listen to everyone, go to places where people talk and drive along the roads that connect us to each other. The job of a newspaper editor is to listen to everyone, go to places where people talk,

and drive along the roads that connect us to each other. You're always looking for a story to fill the pages of your rag. You have to make sure that everyone has a story to hear and a story to tell. These are our stories, in print and saved away for the future generations to see how we handled our time on earth. Also digitized now. Eventually life is mostly a memory but there are memories that you'll never forget either for the joy or for the sorrow. But you have to live in the now and to tell the truth we are a people. The Mi'kmaq, the English, the Scots, the Irish, the Dutch, up to the people who

come from lands far away like the Philippines. People are always saying, come take a look. A woman originally from Orangedale told us the other day that whenever we were called, we came. That's our job. Do the stories for you and call it as we see them. Can't please everyone all of the time. The president of St. Evette's told us one time that if we pleased all the people all of the time, we weren't doing our job. So be it. And so we drive around and see what hasn't been done after people have almost begged

for better service and for getting the job done. Alright. So April, I'm going to get you to introduce yourself. service and for getting the job done. All right. So, April, I'm going to get you to introduce yourself. My name is April McDonald. I have been a reporter at the Orne since birth, as my parents are the owners. But it's been a thrill. Being a young person, my father taking me on assignments with him was just the most exciting thing. Where are you going today, dad?

But also the entire business. Being a young person, learning how to answer phones, deal with the public, learning what my mother did, what my father did, and just being completely engaged and involved in the newspaper. We're standing out on the edge of the highway actually, right now. Central Avenue, yes. Central Avenue. So maybe you can just, actually we're right in front of the offices of the Inverness

Oran. So maybe you can just kind of describe everything we can see. Alright so Inverness has grown so much since the golf course came. It had exploded. When I graduated high school back in 2002, there was plywood going up on all the businesses. This was a dying town. And then new energy, a new economy started when the golf course came here, which is excellent. But businesses are growing. So it's a bustling, booming town now. It's booming to the point where there's not enough workers.

There's such an international draw of people that you have to have. We are just a booming little village. World-class golf courses, world-class restaurants, and one of the best papers in the province. In Scots Gaelic, the word Oran means song. We have a similar word in Ireland where I'm originally from, Auron.

It's the same thought, a hearkening back to a time long ago and to the poets who would travel around the country and sing the news, carrying stories and songs from community to community and long since put out of work by the printed page. A newspaper like the Oran is an echo of that old world, a different time when community meant something different, and it was everyone's responsibility to share the news. Well, we had that back in the days when we were growing up. You didn't lock your doors, you know. You never knew who someone was on their way home was going

to stop over. They couldn't make it home or and they stopped and they'd sleep the night. There's usually a cot beside the stove, you know, and they would come in and they would sleep and then they'd be get up and have tea in the morning and and share the news. Down in the basement there are shelves, floor to ceiling, with copies of every issue of the Oran going back to 1976. In newspaper lingo, this is known as the morgue. I actually do this. I'm in charge every week. I am the one that takes ten copies of the Oran and save it.

Do a kind of a 360. When we look around in this room, what do we see? What you see in this room are shelves and I have them all dated by the year So on the far wall to my left here are the blue books which are our beginning papers and so and then as we go along there there may be a few missing because we used to allow people to come in to look or find something and sometimes they would. But for the most part I have everything here. Every paper from the beginning. We finished in this room, it just keeps going around the room and the year is there and they should be all in order.

So doing some quick math, 50 years at 50 copies a year, is 2,500 newspapers. And that's what we're looking at around here. Yep. Rankin, that's an awful lot of writing to be doing. It's an awful lot of miles on me, I'll tell you. You know, I drive through this county, and I feel so sad now at my age. Almost every second building I pass, I've done a story there. I've done a story there.

I remember doing a story there. I can't remember what that story was, but I know I did a story there. I've done a story there. I remember doing a story there. I can't remember what that story was, but I know I did a story there. But that's it. After 50 years, you're pretty willing to tell the story to everybody. And so as this room filled up, then we obviously had to move out. We do it digitally, of course. We have them all backed up and on computers now, but people still like to come. Like a lady last week said her husband was in the paper, Remembrance Day, 1986, and would I have that copy? And I found it, you know, I'll come down here and I find it and I make a copy for her because, you know, that's what we do. All right, so let's do a little bit of random reading. Let's look up here at 1982,

the 4th of March, 1982, volume six, number 49. Eleanor, what have we got here? Okay. What's the headline? There's a diabetic clinic serving Inverness County. What do we have up here? A pilot coal plant for the straight area. And as you can see, these papers are still typed on a typewriter. This is before we actually moved up.

But every year there is a mass on River Dennis Mountain, and that is still being held today. With Father Janangus Rankin who passed away. Let's open the paper up and see what else is in here. Okay, Frank McDonald's comment. He is still writing, and Frank is actually a third partner in the Orne. He came a year after we started the paper. Frank joined us and he has retired

a number of years ago now, but he still writes a comment for us every week. Here's part of Frank MacDonald's comment for March the 6th, 2013. House calls. He's writing about unemployment insurance, a topic that never goes away and of great significance in the Maritimes. Listen buddy, the thing you should know about the culture of defeat is that we use defeat for walking from no job here to no job anywhere. But I had a job, eh?

Did you even think that maybe, just maybe, I've worked hard and then lost my job and I really need the pittance I'm entitled to. So, a paper like the Oran is telling, you know, to a large degree the stories of the people and the places in Inverness County. Yep. So how important is that past, if you like,

like old Inverness? Oh my God. The old county. What's the significance of the past? Because you don't know who you are if you don't know old Inverness. Oh my God. The old county, what's the significance of the past? Because you don't know who you are if you don't know where you came from. You know, you need to know how this community got to where it was, whether it's the fisheries,

whether it's mining, whether it's forestry. What were the people like who built this community and how hard they worked to make it sustainable. What are the most important things? If you don't know your own local history and this is a place, it's so rich in history and culture, our entertainment, our music, our song, our oral history. And if you don't pass that on to the next generation, then what's the point? I have such hope when I have young students from

schools, their teachers call me and they say, I have a student that wants to job shadow you. Can you give 80 hours of your time to teach them? Because they love the Oran. When I hear a 16 year old reading a newspaper in today's day and age, that's unheard of. They want to be not only a part of the Oran, they want to learn about their local history, and they want to tell their stories, but they also want to tell their neighbor's stories. And I think that's exceptional in today's day and age with TikTok and Instagram,

and everything is just click bait, you know? Back in the morgue, Eleanor has pulled out the Oran for the 4th of March 1982, volume 6, number 49. It looks very different to the papers of today, Big City or not, which are all pretty much graphically similar, designed and laid out on a computer. These papers, from an earlier era, are all products of an old-fashioned typewriter. So if we open it up and it starts off with an editorial and Father Bob Neville, who was

the parish priest at this time, he was very involved with this. He was part of it and he loved it and he was our editor, you know, and we started off with letters to the editor. Actually, I like this idea. It starts out with a little editorial, and then very quickly it's letters. People writing. Yep. You're not telling them what to do, they're telling you.

Exactly, exactly. The aged are forgotten again. So it's people who are just writing. A teenager, a concerned teenager. Dear editor, the letter begins, they are asking for the old St. Mary's Hospital to be turned into a community center. Our ideas are not really exaggerated. So although we are only teenagers, how about keeping our ideas in the back of your mind instead of throwing us in the garbage? The

editorial writer in the facing column agrees. We do have a suggestion. Isn't it time the community got together to seriously consider the problem? You know, so you just go through. Weddings, our births, and then we start into features. Different things that are happening. And that's something we enjoy doing. If it wasn't a story, we enjoy talking to people and writing about them.

And if you take notice at some of the advertising, they're done by hand. We had our little letter sets that we could do printing off. So, yeah, actually, these are all handwritten. And here's a little story about how Pete is made. Right? Yes. All this storytelling over the years, story after story

after story, it has to be a bit like a painting, where each little dot is adding up to a large picture. Do you have a sense of the picture, if you like, of Inverness County right now? Well you get, well when you're a young person you're kind of in your own little you know microcosm into your own little bubble but when I took this job I got to go countywide. There's 27 Margaris you know there's the west side of Southwest Margari there's East Margari, north, so you get to go.

But when you go into these communities, they know you. You make these deep connections with people. They trust you, and as Rankin always says, you're flying the flag of the Oran, and so you show up because it shows you care. And no one's going to tell stories of a little small town in rural Cape Breton. And so when they see how passionate we are about telling their stories, and then when they get to see it in print,

it's about your neighbours, and it's about your friends, and it's about every week telling a new story and putting that out there. You listen to people and what they have to say and then you, like a patchwork quilt, you put it all together and you weave it into a story that's enjoyable, that people wanna read, that people wanna hear, that affects their lives

or that is about their loved ones. And you're tripping over your cousins and loved ones here. My name is Bill Dunphy. I'm the sports editor slash photographer slash editor when Rankin's not here. You know, the guy who puts the water bottle on the water cooler. In the back corner of the newsroom is the desk for Bill Dunphy, long-time sports editor and general all-round journalist. Sports is a big thing for the Oran. In one recent issue, there are five pages on such things as the Dalbray Giants dropping

a couple of recent games, the under-13A Islanders pulling off a couple of ties, and the return of Ringette to Mabu. I guess in a smaller newspaper like this, one of the upsides is the same as one of the downsides, which is that everybody does everything. That's right, yeah, no, everybody contributes in different ways and yeah, that's my contribution. You're primarily, though, a sports writer. Yeah, yeah, for the last 34 years here So can we open up the paper? Oh, but you've got a whole bunch of papers here lying on your desk So let's let's have a look at your at your page or pages. I should say there's more than one sports page in the Oran

That's read me there it was after found in doing the sports for 40 some years now and First time was ever to a truck and tractor pull. Yeah, there's a whole page. Hundreds turn out for first straight truck and tractor pull. And if the huge success of the first ever straight truck and tractor pull means anything, then you can expect a second one down the road. It was a very large turnout.

And then down at the bottom there's a little squib about tryouts for Shetticamp senior team begin. Yeah that was this weekend, I haven't got an update on how that went yet but no there's also stuff in here. There's a lot of photographs in these three pages are you your own photographer or who takes the photos? They're all my photos. You can't get enough photos in the paper of kids and I fill scrapbooks for moms and you know I probably won't win a Pulitzer but I'll certainly fill lots of scrapbooks. I'd love what I do I mean I like being part of that contribution of keeping things alive around here. How long have you been doing it? Gosh I worked at the Flynn-Flawn

Daily Reminder in 1982 so I came back and worked at a down defunct newspaper in Port Oxford. I went to Ontario, worked at the Elmire Independent, then Cochrane Northland Post over to Timmons Daily Press where I was the sports editor there before coming here. When I called Rankin, I knew him from my days here. Yeah, how soon can you get here? I was here in a week. Just packed her up, family and all, and came back. All these papers, they're all, if you like, of a type. They're very local.

You've worked in a bunch of them, as you say. The Copy of the Northland Post was a one-man show. I was the editor, the writer, everything. It was just me. All these papers, are they more alike, or are they more different from each other? What's your sense of it? Oh, more alike because they're serving a community. I think every small community should have a weekly newspaper,

a weekly community newspaper, because the dailies, the chains, they don't serve the communities like I do or like the rank and those or like all of us do here. You know, you're not going to see these stories I just ran off here in the Herald. You're not going to, you know, nobody's interested about the contract awarded for the Inverness Waste Water Treatment Plant other than people in this community. That's not a story you're seeing in the Provincial Dailies. So we serve a need and it's an important one. Here's an ad from the Oran back in 1976.

Vans' grocery, 8 a.m. to 10.30 p.m. seven days a week. And there's a sports profile of Lockheed McQuarrie, the classic martial artist. Lockheed McQuarrie, the classic martial artist. Lockheed never thinks of himself as a fighter. He's a martial artist. Performing a difficult combination of kicks and punches with style, precision and speed is more important than destroying an opponent. You started this in 1976.

Paint me a picture of this community. What was in Verness in 1976? We were brought up here. It was dying. This community was dying, right? The coal mines had closed, people were moving away. So if you're gonna look, we got into something here, you know? She and I, and there was another couple, Lawrence and Jackie Ryan. One day we were sitting down trying to, we'd started a clothing bank and a library. Just something to do, right? We were on unemployment insurance. And we're sitting there one day trying to think, okay, what can we do to pull this community together, start getting things going again?

And we're sitting there and I looked down and the Halifax Herald was there. And I just said, you know what we should do? We should start a newspaper. And I was just joking, right? And they went, oh, that's a great idea. Okay, so we started that. We didn't know anything about newspapers. So we started this newspaper to promote and to reflect what our community was. And then you get these other volunteers that were around like, we want to help out. And so we did. And we knew that that's what we needed. That's what we needed here. I want to pick up on a little bit of this because you mentioned in passing

that the coal had come to an end. In the mid 70s, this is a crisis time. It's a time of transition in Cape Breton, not just in Inverness. Put that in a little bit of context. What was the importance of the coal and what was happening after, if you like, the coal dried up?

Well, the coal was, you know, it made this town. There was 5,000 people in this town one time, 1,000 people working in the coal mines, and it supplied the world with coal. It was out under the ocean, and it was costing more and more and more to keep the water out of the levels, say. So they decided, it's too costly,

we're gonna shut it down. So they shut the mines down. You know, there's a thousand people at work, right? So what happens? People started to go away. So it was pretty bleak. And then as the years went by, it became even more, you know, precarious whether this community was going to survive or not. So the idea came and was formed that if we're going to achieve anything we have to do it ourselves. We have to take the strength of our local communities and work on that. On Ideas you're listening to the Song of Inverness, Ideas producer Philip Coulter's documentary about a family-run

community newspaper on the west coast of Cape Breton Island. You can hear ideas on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, on U.S. Public Radio, across North America on SiriusXM, in Australia on ABC Radio National, on World Radio Paris and around the world at cbc.ca. You can also find us on the CBC News app and wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayd.

Hey, it's me, Michael Buigliet. You hear that? That's the sound of the junos, the biggest party in Canadian music. I'll be there hosting. Sum 41 will be rocking out on stage for the last time, plus a whole lineup of amazing performances. And guess what? You're all invited. All bring the tux, you bring the snacks. Let's make it a night to remember.

Don't miss the Junos, live from Vancouver, March 30th at 8 Eastern on CBC and CBC Jam. at 8 Eastern on CBC and CBC Jam. The Inverness Oran is published in a modest wood frame building on the main street of Inverness, Cape Breton. On the main floor as you go in, it looks like any newsroom in the world, a scattering of well-worn desks, and if journalists everywhere have a look about them,

then these people look like journalists. The Inverness Oran, the Song of Inverness, is just that. A paper that reports on and celebrates all the news that fits small and big from Inverness County. Population 17,000. Here's the conclusion of Philip Coulter's documentary about a community newspaper that survives and thrives. The Song of Inverness. November 27, 2024. Celebrating the exceptional staff at the Inverary Manor by April McDonald. Last Friday, administrators at the Inverary Manor celebrated the exceptional staff who dedicate their days to serving

the residents at our local long-term care facility. There was an incredible spread of food. The Rodney McDonald room was beautifully decorated, and Christmas music was softly playing in the air. As any young person does, when I graduated high school I wanted to get out of my small town and so I went to university. I had big plans on going to law school and big city, Toronto, criminal defense and after I graduated from university I came home that summer and we had an employee that had to

unexpectedly leave. So I with you know all my arrogance said to my father, well I'll step in. I'll fill her role and my father being my father said no no I'll give you an assignment give me 500 words and we'll see. And so I remember that my first assignment, it was beautiful, it was this elderly woman, she lived on Central Avenue on the main street in one of the company houses, I'm sure you know the company houses are the mining houses that were built because this was a mining community, that's what this place was. And she was there when China gifted the giant pandas. And so it was when they were going back to China. So she called the office and she said, I was there.

And so she wanted me to come over. And so Warranken gave me the assignment. I was welcomed into her home. She had tea, she had oat cakes, she had the photos, and it meant so much to her to tell her story and her experience. And that's kind of been our credo. It's been, it's important enough for you to call us, it's important enough for us to show up and hear your story and tell your experience.

And once I did that and then did a few more stories, law school went out the window. I fell in love with speaking to people, allowing them into your life, their life. They open up, they share their experience and whether it's emotional, whether it's they're angry at the potholes in the roads, like it can be anything. You never know where you're going to be on a daily basis. I could be on a fishing boat.

I could be up to my knees and muck on a farm. It's a constant learning experience and I've never been happier with my decision. From the Inverness Oran, the 8th of July, 1992. On the cover, Inverness County celebrates Canada's 125th birthday. Inside, lightning fire destroys Lenora Falls home. Broad Cove family left homeless. An ad for Ducharme strawberry Yupik near Mabu. Call ahead for picking conditions, the Lake Ainslie Heritage Festival. At the Municipal Council meeting, Councillor Charles MacDonald questioned the clerk as to why discussion on the budget was not on the agenda. And the Orangedale Station Association unveils the replica of the front of a famous 10-wheeler

steam engine, the Judique Flyer. In my mind, we joined each community. We joined the people. Even in the early days, if someone passed away, I would go and visit them and I would get their obituary because they wanted it in the paper. And if there was an event going on, they always asked us to come and attend. Everyone was so excited about it, and I think it brought a closeness to everyone. And like I said, and then once we started branching out, Mabu and Port Hood and Sheddy Camp and Margreys and Wicogama, Lake Ainslie, they wanted the same. It's like a thread that we have that runs from Hawkesbury to Shady Camp. You know,

that's what it was and that's what I think that sustains us because where would we be without a paper? The Halifax Herald doesn't come to Inverness. We are the only paper. I think we would be lost without our paper and that's who we are. I mean 48 years is a long time and I will say Rankin it's been your baby since the beginning and he has the same love today as he did then. It's the voice of our county. That's what we are. You pick up the paper and you know that if anything happened in your community, if the Prime Minister was there or there was four lambs born that day, you know that if anything happened in your community, if the Prime Minister was there, or there was four lambs born that day,

you know it's gonna be the orn with good pictures and a good positive story, right? And it also gives people a place where they can argue points solidly, not this foolishness you see on the internet, right? They're really good, well-thought out letters to the editor. From the Inverness Orrin, August the 14th, 2002. The writer is irate about the realignment of a federal writing and complaining about

a recent op-ed by Bill Dunphy. Dear editor, have you recently come off a boat from some far-off sanctuary for wayward Cape Bretoners? The only hope of any future for the Strait of Canso region is in acting as a region. The days of rowing across the strait in the Dory and getting your news at the Sunday service are long gone. When push comes to shove, the mainland side

of the strait could be a much greater asset to the island than Sydney will ever be. I go out on Wednesdays, say I'm going to the co-op or something, and I see somebody running into Freeman's, the local pharmacy, and they come out with their paper. And it's funny, they got their paper, right, and they get in their car and they open out with their paper and yet it's funny they got their paper right and they get in their car and you open it right away what's going on what's going on so the people in Meat Cove know what's going on in part of Hawksbury and you know and all across the county I heard somebody say to me one time that the Oran made Inverness County more of an entity

because it was there. It brought all the communities together, you know, and the stories from each community are told each week. That was our philosophy from the beginning, no stories too small. Call us, we'll be there. My name is Kelly McGilfrey, and I am in advertising and circulation at the Inverness Oran. It's part of our family. I've grown up with it my entire life from I believe I was two weeks

old when I first came here and I worked through here all through high school and between university and then when I moved to Halifax I worked at another newspaper and it wasn't right for me I was like why am I at another newspaper when I belong at this family newspaper so it's yeah it's been part of my life since I was born. I find we are a very close family and probably that's how we run our newspaper as well. You know, like we believe in family values and affection and honesty. And we take pride in ourselves and we take pride in the orange. So I think that how we live our lives is how we run our newspaper.

The paper goes out there and over a long period of time that newspaper collects and the family collects the stories of the community that you're in, in Inverness. What do you think your family takes from what you have learned in the community? Well, I would say that there's no shortage of stories. You know, we always hear the stories from my father, from every community and everyone who's worked here, and then I can pass them on to my children. I tell stories that my father told me when I was a little girl to my children. And so they'll never forget it and then they'll be able to tell their children stories of the community about

a drowning or a rescue or a bear that was stuck in a tree that my father rescued when I was a little girl. So things like that happen, I guess, and I can just pass them down the line to my children and their children. Back in the morgue, Eleanor has found an early copy of the Oran. At the very beginning, the title was in Scots Gaelic, Oran in Viernes. I guess that tells us something, that enough people still spoke the language of the old

country that it wouldn't have seemed strange. But by 1979, things had changed. Now the title is in English, and there's a subhead, serving Inverness County. I don't know when we changed over, whether it was a year or two we went from Gaelic to the English. But we came up with that banner and we all agreed it was fine, it's legible, it was the banner off the paper. And this is 1979. So the headline is Gasparot Fishermen to protest dump. The dump, yeah. That went through for a few years was we have our local landfill and the people along Lake

Ainslie were against it. And they didn't, they were, Lake Ainslie is a beautiful body of water and having a dump next to it. You know, so there was a lot of protests going on at that time. Let's read the first paragraph. What are you saying here? Okay, on Thursday evening a meeting of the Gasparot fishermen of the southwest Marguerite resulted in the formation of the Marguerite Gasparot Fisherman's Association. The immediate aim of the association is to attempt to pressure the municipal government into action concerning the Kenlock dump. Okay, so let's open up the paper to see what's going on

in that year and in that week. Letters to the editor. Okay, who's this from? Donna Davis, oh my heavens. Okay, dear sir, as a practic- practicing health professional, having recently been a patient in the ICMH which is the hospital I wish to congratulate director of nursing Mrs. Betty Jane Cameron and her team of registered nurses and certified nursing assistants on providing optimum patient care. Well there you go. Perfect use for a letter to the editor. Let everybody in the community know that I was very well treated at the hospital. They do that a lot. Look at the ads, look at the ads standing here. What have we got?

What advertising? Well, this is Cameron's gift and jewelry. It doesn't exist anymore. Sad to say quite a lot of them. McGinnis's service station, right next door, also has completely gone. It doesn't even exist anymore and that's the sad part about it. We've been around a long time, but to see businesses come and go. And... You can get your chimney cleaned by Peter McSween. Yes. You know...

And you can go to John Dan's store to improve your home. Yes, you can. John Dan's and that... All of these. There's not one of these that exists today. The small ads in a newspaper. That's a world that no longer exists. Once upon a time, anyone could afford an inexpensive ad in a community newspaper and know exactly

who would be reading that ad. Also, in their simplicity, small ads give you a real feel for a store, a product, a community. Reliable babysitter, Phone Cindy. McDonald's Denture Clinic, two locations in Sydney Mines and Badek. Crosby's Orange Juice is $2.99 at McClellan's Grocery in Inverness. In the early days, when we started the newspaper, all the businesses in town supported us. They ran a little ad and some of them didn't need to. Everybody knew where that garage was.

Everybody knew what it was, but they believed in us. They believed in us and they ran a little ad in our paper every single week and some of them did it until they retired, you know, and that's what we got back from them. They believed in us, so we felt we had to do our job as well. You know? I love that idea. They'd buy an ad even though they didn't need it. It's true. As a matter of fact... Everybody knew what the store was. Everybody knew. They all did. Everybody did. They supported us because they wanted a newspaper.

They wanted that means of what's going on. And we grew it's like the county or you know it's Port Hood looks after the county right that's where it's situated so anything going on municipally is in our paper so someone in Sheddy Camp or Mead Cove in the Margarit's they know what's happening what happened at the council meeting last week. If there's no paper, who's gonna know what happened? What I find when I'm going to a hundred year old woman's birthday party up at our Inverary Manor, which is the Long-term care facility. It's the change the change that they have seen, you know

They have seen the boys coming home from the war They've seen this town come from a mining town to a bus town to poverty to paved streets to plumbing to the internet to cell phones to them all being on Facebook now so they can connect with their grandchildren who live in Ontario or wherever. It's the change they've seen but the love that they have for this place. It's intoxicating to see once this place gets in your blood, it'll never leave it. And that's the beauty of this place. It's a place of magic. It really is.

We're welcoming, we're loving, we care about each other. We are a community who cares. We're good people. We're looking back at like 48 years of history all around us here now. Are there stories that stick out for you? Events that the Oran had a role in that were important to you, important to the paper, important to the community that are just memorable and important? I remember the controversy over the priests, right? And we were very involved in that. I'm a Catholic and we were, we delved into that really, you know, because there was two in Inverness where were suicides and you know all that. I spoke to their parents and I, that was the the hardest thing I ever did in my life. I had one woman come in and tell me she she will never get into heaven. This is a beautiful woman who went to church every Sunday, believed

in her in her faith and said because she hated the priest so much her son killed himself. And this went on we had threats that were going to burn down our building. The bishop spoke against us. It was a time when it really made you feel that you were in the middle of something that you had to be part of, you know. Not for any self-engrandisement or for the paper, but it was the right thing to do. The right thing to do, says Rankin. It's easy to think about newspapers like the Oran as quaint relics of the past, a reminder of a time when community really mattered and the local newspaper was there to accentuate

the positive, to be the glue that holds the community together. But I'd argue that talking back to power is just as important as reporting on last night's Mabu Tiger's Ringette Game, and that a small town newspaper's most important role is to articulate and sustain the values we share as a people. Maybe even more important than for a big city paper. The stakes are higher. The readers are your friends and neighbors. You could go out of business in a heartbeat. It's an enormous legacy.

It was something that was created by a bunch of hippies, essentially, who came home and were trying to decide what they wanted to do. And I respect my father and mother immensely. They worked so hard. There were times where there was no money coming in in the early days and they had a young family, but they stuck with it and they worked their tails off. And so I want to continue on that,

carry on that legacy for them. And so to carry on that legacy is immensely important to me. And also I love my job. And I also want to make my father proud. I think our stories are as important as anyone else's and who else is going to tell them besides us. And because I fell in love with writing, I love it. I love writing, I love interviewing,

I love being a journalist. So I fell into this and had the best mentor, my father. And my sister, she followed in my mother's footsteps. We do have to take this to the next generation, because as we all know, everything is going digital. So how do you make a paper, weekly newspaper, survive? Following the formula that my father taught me, which is what I said before.

If it's important to somebody in your community, then it's important to us how silly it may or may not be. If somebody's saying, I found a fish on the beach and you have to come see it, you go. If somebody's going to call you, you go. So I just think it's going to be hard work and it's carrying on a legacy that I think is incredibly important. I actually don't see the paper changing that much. I want to stay away from the online digital version. I think people need to read a newspaper and go to public events

and see for themselves what's happening in their community and I try and still that in my children. I like them to turn their phones off and I like them to watch the news with me and I like them to read grandpa's editorial and that's what I like. I want them to do the opposite of what the world is doing right now. I want to get back into the newspaper lifestyle. My kids are paper boys. It's a family business and you will knock on doors and sell the paper for your grandfather and your grandmother. They literally have a paper route. Both of them do, yes. One is ten and one is thirteen.

And they've had them for a couple years now and they knock on the doors and they say, would you like to buy a paper? And that's what they do every Wednesday after school. I look after the paper boys. Well, I should say the paper carriers because we have a lot of great girls who are paper carriers as well. And they come after school and they race down and they pick up their papers and they are assigned certain streets and they knock on the door and they have regulars and then they have customers who, even if they're not home, they leave it for them because next week they will pay them. And it's a job and kids come down rain or shine and take them out and sell them every week and it's their pocket money and it teaches them responsibility, I guess.

What does the Orin cost? $2.30. It's cheaper if you have a subscription. and it's their pocket money, and it teaches them responsibility, I guess. What does the Oran cost? $2.30. It's cheaper if you have a subscription. It is $57.50 for a year, and it comes every week in the mail. Yeah, it's like a buck an issue. That's a pretty good bargain these days.

You can't buy a candy bar for that price. No, you can't. You really can't. No, so no no it's good. Where we live in Indianess County, it is an older segment of the population, you know, but they still want them to read it. They want to take that paper and put it on the table and have their tea and coffee and they want to read it. And I get their letters, I get their subscriptions, I do talk to them on the phone and they don't want to digital. A few of them do with the mail service people in Boston who were from

here. They don't want to read it three weeks later because that's how long it takes to get there. They want to read it that night so they have digital and I do it is difficult there's no doubt about it what we're up against with it but we're very fortunate where we live people still want to paper they want to see it they want to hold it they want to have it all week long today I did an ad for a woman's hundredth birthday and the daughter said she will love it when she opens that paper because it's her favorite paper and she wants it in the paper yeah you know so here in the the county we're good because that's what people want.

They still want a paper version. But when you're in Calgary, like we get calls from Calgary, it takes a week. They get it the next Wednesday. If they don't, they'll phone from Calgary and say, went out to my mailbox, no paper, what's going on? There's a sense of nostalgia for the past that surrounds a newspaper like the Oran. Not I think the useless nostalgia for an ideal past that never in fact existed, but a past with a sense of community, of common good, was what held people together, gave them a

sense of identity. Yes, I'm a Canadian. But maybe more important, I'm from Mabu Mines or Port Hood or Marguerite, a place that's redolent of a set of values, and that's what tells me who I am when I'm living in Calgary and waiting for the newspaper from home to arrive. And the people who make that paper? They're the local poets, the collectors of all the small things that don't really matter until they do, like the travelling storytellers of an age long ago.

I know everybody. Everybody knows me from Sheddicam down to Port Oxford. I'm known. I know a lot of people. And I don't think you get that anywhere else. You can probably name everybody in town. Everybody knows me when they see me for sure and sometimes names are hard for me to come up with. I enjoy that part of it because we're a community, we're family basically. Everybody just knows everybody. That's important I think think, to making life

good, you know what I mean? I don't know. That's kind of where it comes from me. I enjoy living here, I'm glad I came here and I'm not leaving here. Sometimes the stories are just a story, but sometimes the story is about a family, and sometimes the story is about a family, and sometimes the story is about a tragedy, a fire, a fisherman, a farmer, and they're all our stories, and we're a collective, we're a community. It's a community paper that stems from Port Hastings, right to Mead Cove, and we all have our own trials, our tribulations, and our successes. And whether it's an accolade or whether it's something heart wrenching,

all these stories need to be told. And it is the history of this county. Orin is a Gaelic word for song. And so we like to think of it as the voice of Inverness County. And so who's going to sing our songs? And who's going to put this county on record but us? That's the point for us. I remember one day walking to work and it was a beautiful sunny day and I walked across street and you know storekeepers were standing out but I knew every single person so as I went by it was

good morning how are things today what's new today you would stop and chat and as I got over to this end of town where our office is now I had such a wonderful warm feeling of where I lived and why I live here because the people here, they're just wonderful. They're kind and they're caring and we all care for each other. To me it's like why would I want to live anywhere else? You know? On Ideas you've been listening to the Song of Inverness, Ideas producer Philip Coulter's documentary about a small community newspaper

in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Special thanks to the McDonald family, Rankin and Eleanor McDonald, April McDonald, and Kelly McGilvery, and to Bill Dumphy. This program was produced by Philip Coulter. For Ideas, our technical producer is Danielle DuVal. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Senior producer, Nikola Lukcic.

Greg Kelly is the executive producer of Ideas. And I'm Nala Ayed. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.