This Ontario town lost its local newspaper. But the stories haven't stopped
CBC
Humphrey Rogers has no email. He doesn't use Facebook. So he keeps missing events in town.
"People say, 'There was a car show out there on Saturday. How come you didn't go to it?' I say, 'I didn't know about it.'"
It's not for lack of trying. The 87-year-old is hyper-involved around Tilbury, Ont., the smallish town of 4,800 between London and Windsor where he's lived since 1946.
Rogers volunteers in sports, at the Legion, with the historical society and the Kinsmen, sits on the cemetery board and goes over to the nursing home to host bingo on Wednesdays. (He calls out so many numbers, his voice goes hoarse).
But there's no local newspaper here anymore. He's struggling to stay in touch with the town.
"It doesn't make me feel very good. I don't know exactly what the word is for it ... it's just, you're not on the in-group," Rogers said. "I hear it every day, 'Didn't you see it on Facebook?'"
Postmedia shut down the weekly Tilbury Times in May 2020, after 136 years. Rogers used the paper to find out about — and advertise — events, track sports scores and learn who died.
He now gets his friend with a computer to look up obituaries for him.
There's no clear alternative. Tilbury sometimes gets covered in Chatham's newspaper, the closest big centre 25 kilometres away. But it's not the same.
Some use Tilbury's local Facebook groups. The most popular, The Tilbury Tymes, is named in tribute to the paper. At 2,300 members, it's almost half the population of the town.
Recent posts include searches for lost pets, an advertisement for schnitzel night at the golf course and someone trying to figure out who left the cooler full of beer on the old railroad tracks that they just hit and dragged with their car.
Char Spinosa runs the group from her home in Niagara Falls, Ont., approving who gets in and moderating posts. She grew up in Tilbury and moved when she was 15.
"What I've done is come in and fill the void," she said.
Keeping discourse civil has been tricky. Spinosa bans any posts about COVID-19 and politics because people get too nasty.
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