The more things change, the more they stay the same.
As cliché as the adage may be, one only needs a glance at headlines in the Peace Arch News when this paper first hit the stands 40 years ago – an anniversary marked on this very day, we might add – to realize the truth of it.
The topics then – just as today – covered a familiar range of community interests, from concern over water bills in White Rock and pride in students notching impressive achievements, to issues with parking, crime and tax hikes.
Then, it was “School board to talk to teachers”; “BNR Station plans not stationary”; “Local girl reaches finals”; “Hospital auxiliary has successful year”; “Perplexing parking problems probed” – the list goes on.
While the “players” of the stories have certainly changed over the years – along with PAN staff, the newspaper industry itself and, perhaps most notably, the many ways we now share the news – the things that matter to the community have been largely consistent.
Sharing these matters with readers was a driving factor behind the creation of PAN. Launched Feb. 10, 1976 with an original run of just 13,000 copies – and initially known as The Peace Arch News and Consumers’ Guide – it was put together in an office just north of 16 Avenue/North Bluff Road. Distribution, for the most part, was by Canada Post.
There were seven stories on the front page that first day – compared to the less-cluttered two- or three-story norm of today. Readers gleaned information on everything from the construction of a new post office at 24 Avenue and King George Highway, to the illness of former White Rock mayor Harry Douglass and the annual meeting of the Canadian Red Cross Society.
These days, you won’t find recipes for elephant stew on these pages; also long gone are such intriguing – and perhaps confusing – headlines as “Senior citizens who vibrate”.
But if you leaf through an issue – and we hope you do – you will still learn who took White Rock officials to task most recently; what high school students have been up to; what advice seniors heard at a local meeting and more.
Avidly read and actively debated, it is – and always has been – a work in progress.
As PAN founder Roy Jelly stated in a typically modest page-one introduction four decades ago: “It is impossible to include all the news we would like and we are sure we can do better.”
Many awards and accolades later, that commitment hasn’t changed. The process may be imperfect, but the aim must always be to improve.