Keegan Kozolanka
Covering Centre Wellington councillor Neil Dunsmore's walk to Ottawa in support of mental health and suicide is this year's story that has left the most impact in my mind. Here's a 55-year-old man with a bad knee who is determined to give a voice to a nation-wide problem. I was mildly in awe of what he was doing.
On a personal note, around the time I first spoke with Neil about this walk I learned that a friend had died by suicide. The day before I was staring at a coffin that contained my friend and the next talking frankly with Neil about an issue that I knew was all too real. I broke a bit of journalistic partialness and opened up to Neil about what had happened and speaking with him made me feel a bit better. I thank Neil for the compassion he showed to me and to people in general.
Ariel Deutschmann
Since working here, I've had the pleasure of covering many different stories within Guelph. Out of all of them, I would say my favourite article to write was 'Guelph psychotherapist teams up with writer to publish series on dealing with grief'. I don't know what this says about me as a person to choose an article about the authors behind a book series on grief, but I have always enjoyed talking to writers about their work. I find learning about how they got started writing is just as fascinating as what they publish.
In this particular case, I learned that the author's husband died from a heart attack just outside their home. This incredibly sad experience the author goes through is similar to others who lose someone, and working with the psychotherapist, uses her accounts of her grief and others to craft stories and poems that make their series unlike other counselling books out there. As this year brings all kinds of grief to people, learning to talk about it and heal from it has become very important. I hope that others take some insight from this conversation as I did while working on this article.
Richard Vivian
My favourite articles to write this year, having joined the GuelphToday team in September, both involved a little bit of chase to track down and came with an impact from shining a spotlight on their subject matter.
One began with a news tip about a man and a dog walking along Hwy. 6 pulling what appeared to be a casket. Long story short, it required some time to track them down and took me on an adventure of intrigue as I sought to figure out what it was all about before I could find them, which took a couple days. In the end, the man was on a 30-day walk to raise awareness about male mental health and suicide rates. An important cause indeed.
The other is a complicated issue related to how, and if, the city's advisory committees are consulted on issues of importance to help guide city council in its decision-making. It's the end result which I enjoyed the most ... regular reviews of the role these committees play, with an aim of ensuring their voices are heard.
Kenneth Armstrong
Working as a reporter I am able to interview all kinds of important people like CEOs, politicians and celebrities, but often my favorite stories are the ones shared by regular people in the community. For the upcoming Unsung portrait series (it will be published later this month) I reached out to businesses and organizations in the city to feature regular people on the front lines who have been instrumental in keeping us all safe and healthy during the pandemic.
Over the course of two weeks I met dozens of Guelphites who have risen to the extraordinary challenges of COVID-19. We couldn't feature everybody doing important work in the community, but we did want to offer a glimpse at just some of those roles in our community.
Anam Khan
After the first lockdown, I interviewed some front-line workers which included a doctor, two paramedics and a nurse.
The doctor helped create the first assessment clinic and was working tirelessly with others in Guelph to make services available, the nurse was writing and sharing poems that told her story and the roller coaster of emotions she felt, while the paramedics shared their stories of interactions with people in this world post-COVID-19.
What I found interesting about this was how different each of their experiences has been and how they were working around the clock to ensure the safety of the community. They were risking their lives to do it.
I liked that the spotlight was on front line workers. For the first time, I was able to interview a front line worker about their work, but most importantly, about their emotions.
I was unable to interview other professions of front line workers, but with the interviews I did conduct, I was able to stop and really think about and appreciate the importance of these front line workers, pandemic or no pandemic. And for that, I’m grateful.
