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Lund Barnacle connects village

Community newspaper highlights local interest stories and content
barnacle
READER FRIENDLY: Sandy Dunlop is the current editor of the Lund Barnacle, which was first published in 1988. Brian Voth photo

In early summer 1988, the premiere issue of Lund News was published. It cost one dollar and the front page had a photograph of four children standing beside “a bizarre sea creature” hanging on the dock.

“We were standing on the dock when that six-gilled shark got caught,” said Bill Smith, editor of the first Lund newspaper. “We were talking and realized that most people didn't know what the heck they were looking at and we thought, 'We need a newspaper.' That's how it got started.”

Incidentally, the shark was a bluntnose sixgill, usually called a cow shark and a near-threatened species, weighed about 136 kilograms and was 3.5 metres in length.

Readers of Lund News were promised reading material that included local interest stories, controversy, real people and a special report on fish farms.

A "name the Lund News" contest took place and Lund Barnacle won.

The early Lund Barnacle was published before social media and new printing technology. It was how the village connected. The paper was put together using typewriters, calligraphy and little illustrations of flora and fauna sprinkled throughout, and it was all cut and paste.

“We brought it into the old Powell River News that still had a printer here,” said Smith. "They would print it up for us on big broadsheet and everybody contributed to it. It was just a gas.”

Smith stayed with the paper as editor and writer for 10 years. Various editors took over in the ensuing years, including Valerie Durnin, Suzan Roos, Rianne Matz, Ann Snow and Eve Stegenga.

When Sandy Dunlop became editor in 2014, she said she was, and still is, keen to do the job.

“I started writing for the Barnacle back when I was a mediator, so I wrote about conflict resolution issues starting in the early ’90s,” said Dunlop. “I didn't write much else but the odd thing until taking on the job.”

The year before Dunlop became editor, there was only one issue of Lund Barnacle and it was eight pages. It is currently a quarterly and 40 pages.

According to Smith and Dunlop, a large pool of contributors has always been available to draw on in the small village, and the quality of writers has been a constant.

“Out in the woods in Lund there were so many educated hippies and people who wanted to get away from the rat race,” said Smith. “They were not dummies, so the writing was great and there were all kinds of ideas.”

According to Dunlop, Lund Barnacle still has a bit of everything, including a combination of news, updates, photos by locals, poetry and prose, crosswords and cartoons. But, Dunlop said she avoids controversy.

“I added something to the editorial policy when I took over, which was that I wanted it to be sensitive,” she said. “The sensitivity part is I don't want it to be starting arguments. I want it to start conversations about what was in the Barnacle. I don't want it to be too ornery.”

In 2015, Lund Community Society received a grant from the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre at University of BC’s library to have Powell River Historical Museum and Archives digitize as many back issues of Lund Barnacle as possible, beginning with the premiere issue.

To see back issues of the Lund Barnacle, go to lundcommunity.ca.