Year in review: Helwig begins seventh decade as totally annoying journalist

No, I'm not really that old.

But as of Jan. 1, it has been seven decades.

I started writing for the Sarnia Observer in the late 1960s, a skinny kid in short pants delivering papers containing my weekly column to suburban neighbourhoods famous for earning the nation's highest blue-collar wages.

Between hiatuses working as a colourblind paint mixer, a bumbling hot-dog bun-baker and a still-scrawny loss-prevention officer trying to apprehend members of northern Quebec's notorious biker gangs, I did time as a Canadian journalist during the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s and now, the 20s.

A working career of just over 50 years – spread over seven decades by a fluke of the calendar.

I admit I originally got into this racket dreaming I might become popular.

But long before arriving in Sault Ste. Marie in February, 2002, I'd abandoned all hope of pleasing readers or newsmakers.

Every place I went, no matter how hard I tried to be adorable and cuddly, somebody was always upset.

Seriously, the harder I worked at being ravishingly seductive, the more people seemed to get bent out of shape.

So one day, during an unusually long paradigm shift in the men's room, I decided to focus instead on annoying everyone equally.

"Okay, boomer," I said to myself. "You've finally found your niche – effortlessly infuriating everyone across every political and religious persuasion, every gender identity, every age, every income level."

Immediately, life became so much simpler.

Here in the Sault, I launched a digital-only news service that was built by a lot of talented, hard-working people and patient investors into a national chain called Village Media.

Somehow, this community found it in its heart to let me hang my annoying hat here for all those 18 years.

The following are my most memorable moments of the past year, 2019.

Village Media on a roll

As local media outlets close and venerable newspaper chains downsize themselves to irrelevance, Sault-based Village Media Inc. added 16 new staff in 2019, bringing our total full-time workforce to 70. We moved into impressive new digs in the former Royal Bank/Credit Counselling building at Queen and Bruce, struck major new partnerships in the United States and England, won a four-year legal battle that ended at the Supreme Court of Canada and picked up a national journalism award and nominations for two more sportswriting and newswriting awards to be announced in Toronto on Jan. 9. Remarkably, our Canadian audience reach grew more than 50 per cent in just one year. Through our collaborative partner network, we now reach an average of five million unique users a month. Even the Florida-based Poynter Institute for Media Studies and Rebel Media firebrand Ezra Levant were singing our praises in 2019. Levant, never among my favourite news sources, went so far as to say our readers are better informed than those of the Toronto Star or the CBC!

Hits and misses

Economically, we lost the Museum Ship Norgoma tourist attraction in 2019, as well as the downtown Walmart, the Korah library and the Sutherland and Agero call centres. We gained, subject to regulatory approvals, a wildly controversial ferrochrome smelter. We were also promised a downtown plaza, a new YMCA, a federal immigration pilot program, $300 million in new capital investments at Algoma Steel and an exciting urban indigenous housing hub to be built on the former Gateway lands.

City logo

We also got a new $100,000 city logo. Let's just not talk about that, okay? Thank you for understanding!

Dave Selvers

Like the city logo, the less said about Dave Selvers, the better. The local crane company owner known for online rants about women, liberal politicians, blacks, Muslims, LGBTQ+ persons and SooToday's "fake news," found himself ostracized by Sault College, City of Sault Ste. Marie, Algoma Steel and Batchewana First Nation. Selvers then sold his Millennium Crane Rentals Ltd. to metal fabricator Steel Speed Inc., which renamed the company, retaining all Millennium's employees and condemning Selvers' views as "unacceptable."

The bus that never came

For all of you who've been asking about my Nov. 5 story about the new Bruce Street bus shelter mistakenly erected outside SooToday's new office building, I really did stupidly sit out there waiting for a bus that never came. I was so excited about having a sit-down transit shelter right at our back door. I waited there twice, only to learn that we'd been given a spiffy new bus shelter but no bus route. Not only was the transit shelter moved elsewhere, but work crews eventually pulled out the new street benches and bike racks too.