By Gordon Lambie
It gets awkward, when you write the news, if that news ends up being about you. Things are far easier if you can just avoid it as much as possible. In a small community you can’t always get to stay out of things completely, though, so here we are.
Wednesday Feb.1 was my last day with The Record, after just over a decade of bringing you the daily news from different parts of the Eastern Townships. I’m not going anywhere, I’m just trading in one local journalism job for another; this time with CBC Quebec. As I make that transition, though, I’m going to be carrying a lot of The Record with me.
When I started writing for the paper, I was a few months out of university and a few weeks into a contract teaching English and math to first graders. I had no interest in journalism, but I’ve loved writing since the second grade and when Sheila Quinn put me in touch with then-editor Daniel Coulombe about the idea of writing an occasional column, it seemed like an interesting opportunity.
That column space was a real gift. It was essentially an unrestricted space to say whatever I felt like with no particular theme other than looking on the bright side of life. What it did for me in a practical sense, though, was get me used to writing for an audience. I would put things down on paper and then people would talk to me about them; weird in the moment, but important in retrospect.
