When you live out at the end of the road, you get used to doing things for yourself; there’s nobody else to do it, after all. Lund’s community newsletter, the Lund Barnacle (“will grow on you,” says the first issue), has been the place where all the things people pulled off together out here were organized, celebrated, debated and critiqued four times a year, for most of the last 30 years.
Thanks to some dedicated volunteers and the support of Powell River Historical Museum and Archives, nearly every issue, all the way back to July 1988, is now available online.
Current editor Sandy Dunlop had the idea for the Barnacle digitization project when she started to realize the old issues were going to deteriorate and be lost if someone didn’t do something.
“I had saved many of the back issues I had purchased as they came out over the years, because I thought they were so wonderful,” said Dunlop.
The call went out to collect back issues people had hiding in basements and scrapbooks and soon nearly every issue had been collected.
“Tracking them all down was a challenge, especially trying to find ones without coffee rings, doodles and completed crossword puzzles,” said Dunlop. “Plus, I could not know for sure if missing issues had ever even been printed, since the Barnacle’s publishing schedule has always depended on the editor at the time, who was, of course, just a volunteer with a busy life.”
Something referred to as “Lund Time” is always a factor, too, like the years when one or two issues maybe just didn’t happen, or the year where there ended up being two winter issues.
I popped over to Dunlop’s house one morning and she let me take a look through the old paper copies. It says a lot about a community to look at what is considered newsworthy; 11-foot-long sharks being caught off Lund dock, gardening and fishing tips and a recap of the Lund Days’ pie-throwing contest from the summer of 1989.
I was struck by how many of the things people were worried about 30 years ago are things we are still talking about now: the environmental impacts of fish farms, gripes about the silly, or dangerous or just plain rude parking practices of tourists on Highway 101, and worries that outside authorities will swoop into our community, where people value independence, and start making rules for us.
It is wonderful to follow the thread of Lund’s unique character and culture back through time and see what has remained constant in our community while so much else has changed.
“I love the unrestrained sense of humour,” said Dunlop of the old issues. “Sometimes it might have been in poor taste, but it was always hilarious.”
This is exactly what you would expect of a community with a history of thumbing its nose at expectations and doing things on its own terms. Here’s hoping we can keep doing it for another 30 years.
The Lund Barnacle archive is available at lundcommunity.ca/barnacles.html.
