Just A Gal From Glidden: Six years and counting

By Kate Winquist

Six years ago this July, Your West Central Voice rolled off the press for the first time.

I was living in a furnished condo with our youngest child. The newspaper was running out of a tiny 10-by-10-foot office. Robert was still back home. No dog, no cat, no certainty that any of this would work.

It did. Not because it was easy. Because we refused to quit.

WELCOME HOME. The Kindersley Chamber of Commerce marquee announces the arrival of Your West Central Voice in the summer of 2020. Six years later, the paper has grown to serve more than 4,000 households across 26 communities.

WHERE IT STARTED. The original Your West Central Voice office in Kindersley, circa 2020. The room measured 10 by 10 feet. The ambition was considerably larger.

We've grown far beyond anything I imagined. Sometimes I think we've grown a little too much. But I suppose that's a good problem to have.

This week added another 24 pages to an already full plate. Graduation editions for Your West Central Voice, The Kerrobert Chronicle and The Rosetown Eagle are some of my favourite work of the year. They're also a reminder that the deadline never waits.

July slows things down a little. People head to the lake. Families take time away. Robert and I don't have grand vacation plans this year, and honestly, that sounds just about perfect.

What I want is to grab my camera and hit the back roads.

Somewhere along the way I've become tied to my desk. There are always another dozen emails, another story to edit, another page to build. I need to remind myself why I fell in love with photography in the first place.

One place I keep meaning to return to is the Great Wall of Saskatchewan, just outside Smiley.

Built by Albert Johnson over nearly three decades, the dry-stone wall stretches more than a third of a mile. Every stone placed by hand. No mortar, no cement. One man's quiet, remarkable vision sitting out among the fields.

Robert and I stumbled onto it by accident the last time we were in the area. We'd been wandering through the village, admiring the church and the community hall, when there it was. I couldn't believe I'd never heard of it. The roads were muddy that day and we never made it down to the sod hut on the property. I said we'd come back.

That was six years ago.

I still have that curious mind. I still slow down for an old church, a weathered grain elevator, a forgotten building with a story to tell. I still wonder who built it, who lived there, what those walls would say if they could talk.

That's probably why I came home to west-central Saskatchewan in the first place.

The stories are here. They always have been.

Sometimes all it takes is choosing the scenic route.