The Deep Cove Crier was launched in February 1988 as a fundraiser for the Seycove Secondary band.
The idea being, if selling ads to promote the band was successful then it would become a monthly. Musician and insurance broker Wilf Fawcett jumped at the idea and has been a loyal advertiser in the paper ever since.
Volume One, No. 1 of the Crier is dated February 1988.
The headline story was: Boathouse and Hall Discussed at Meeting. The two structures were just an idea back then, now we know the Boathouse as the home of both Deep Cove Canoe and Kayak and the Deep Cove Rowing Club.
The hall is now the Deep Cove Cultural Centre, a multi-purpose volunteer-run arts building. It is the home of Deep Cove Stage Society, First Impressions Theatre, the Seymour Art Gallery and Deep Cove Heritage Society, opening its doors on March 31, 1992.
In 1988, Deep Cove was a sleepy little village, a bit of a secret treasure in North Vancouver. People might drive out on a sunny Sunday to go swimming, or rent a canoe. The Savoury restaurant on Gallant was the hot spot, actor Bruno Gerussi of the TV series The Beachcombers was said to dine there often.
The once-popular hotdog and fish and chip shop, the Nutshell, had traded in its humble beginnings to become another venue of fine dining.
In 1988 there were no longer any plays produced by Deep Cove Stage in the Cove as its home in the old Deep Cove Community Hall was demolished in June 1987.
Deep Cove Stage, along with the other groups, started fundraising for the new cultural centre. The Deep Cove Crier has been a terrific supporter of the cultural centre and all the community groups in the Seymour area.
Bruce Coney and his family lived right in Deep Cove on Eastleigh Lane.
Originally all the paste-ups were done in the dining room of their residence by Bruce, Gail and their daughter Janine. Headlines and text were created by Marion Taggart, a desktop publisher who lived in Windsor Park.
Ads were created by hand, drawing the borders – Bruce was lightning fast – and cutting clip art from books and pasting in text.
In 1991, I took a press release to Patches, a little gift shop in Deep Cove. It was the drop-off place for information destined to make it in the Crier’s monthly newspaper. I was hoping for a mention in the paper of a new play for First Impressions Theatre.
I was surprised to get a phone call from Bruce, the publisher. He asked if I had created the press release myself. “Yes.” He asked if I had my own computer at home. “Yes.” He asked if I wanted a part-time job. “YES!” With that I began creating display ads for both the Deep Cove Crier and his other paper, the downtown weekly, the West End Times.
When I came along I created the ads on my computer by working from Bruce’s hand-drawn examples, leaving space for the clip art to be pasted in, later I began getting some computer graphics. We didn’t have the internet then, computers weren’t connected.
Bruce didn’t know about computers and I sure didn’t know anything about the newspaper business (his background in newspapers came from when he lived in South Africa before moving to Canada in 1982).
When Bruce told me not to make a box for the border of the ad, just make the ad material so it would fit within the exact measurements of a box he would later draw, I thought it was something about newspaper production. I would make the box, create the ad in it and delete the box before giving it to him.
One time I forgot to delete the box and explained I always first made a box so I could be sure the information would fit in the final size and we realized, he thought he was saving me time by hand drawing the boxes later. So I made the boxes after that.
Once I had my ads done I would bicycle down and deliver them to his house, so they could be pasted onto boards and rushed downtown for printing. As the years went by technology, and particularly the internet, made much of the process easier.
Although in those early internet years, there were times where the stress level was through the roof when emails wouldn’t go through and deadlines were looming.
Bruce’s wish was that the Deep Cove Crier be a place when residents of the Seymour area could go to find information and to have an open public forum about issues facing this special place.
One of the first contributors, and a longtime writer for the Crier, was Pat Johnson, who covered politics affecting the area as well as stories of interest.
There were many more Crier contributors including Ed Hird, Bill Blakely, Janet Pavlik’s travel column and Shelley Harrison Rae, who today still keeps tabs on what is happening in the seniors’ community.
Since the Deep Cove Cultural Centre opened its doors, the Crier has promoted the four community groups’ activities. When a notice went in looking for people interested in playing tennis in 1997, droves turned out and the Deep Cove Tennis Club was formed, with Bruce as a founding member.
Advertising in the Crier has always been affordable for community groups and many of the advertisers today, have been supporting the paper since the beginning – Fawcett Insurance on the back page, The Crab Shop, Realtor Marco Reichgeld, The Raven, the theatre groups and others that have come onboard over the years and stayed.
Bruce left Deep Cove and moved to Salt Spring Island in February 2002, but had been commuting monthly to work on the Crier. The North Shore News bought the Crier in 2015, when Bruce retired.
What Bruce continues to love about the Crier is that every month it is alive. It is still alive. Circulation for that first Crier newspaper was 5,000; today it’s distributed to 9,900 homes and businesses east of the Seymour River.
The Crier is still a very valuable asset to our community. You are reading it right now. If it is not delivered to your home, the Crier can be picked up at various outlets including the Deep Cove Cultural Centre, where 100 copies are picked up every month, and newspaper boxes throughout the Seymour area.
Thanks for reading, and let’s keep the Crier alive for a long time to come! ■
Deep Cove was Eileen Smith’s first home going back to 1947. She has lived here most of her life except for years 1967-1973. She has produced all the plays and concerts for First Impressions Theatre since its inception in 1983. A board member of Deep Cove Heritage Society, she also co-authored its book Echoes Across Seymour and has been the co-ordinator of the Deep Cove Cultural Society since the building opened in 1992. She has contributed to the Deep Cove Crier since 1991. Her husband Michael is every bit as involved with the theatre and cultural centre as Eileen is. For 10 years her Jack Russell terrier, Tyke, was always at her side. Since Tyke’s passing, a new little rescue, Bailey, has taken his place.
