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Dave Obee: The challenges of delivering a newspaper in stormy weather

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. But please, not for this long, and not by this much. The weather this week has created many challenges throughout Vancouver Island, with businesses closing early, meetings cancelled, and more.
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Tobogganers take advantage of the snowy conditions in Beacon Hill Park on Dallas Road on Wednesday.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. But please, not for this long, and not by this much.

The weather this week has created many challenges throughout Vancouver Island, with businesses closing early, meetings cancelled, and more. I don’t remember ever seeing so many ferry cancellations in so few days, and I have been paying attention to ferries for many decades.

As I write this, on Wednesday afternoon, we are still digging out from a big dump of snow, and the forecast calls for more snow and strong winds as well.

This weather has had a huge impact on the Times Colonist as well, because our business depends on getting our newspaper to about 40,000 doors by the time you wake up each day.

A quick look at some of the issues we faced on Wednesday:

The newspaper is printed in Ladysmith, with two-thirds of the print run coming south of the Malahat. The big trucks all were successful in getting their papers out of the printing plant.

One of our local trucks, which takes the papers to carriers, was in a collision and had to be parked. One of our cars got stuck on Fort Street. Some of our drivers could not even get to work.

Deliveries to many areas were delayed or discouraged because parking lots had not been cleared. Think of it this way: If you have 1,000 papers to deliver, and you think there is a good chance you will get stuck when you try to drop off that dozen, will you pull into the lot anyway, or carry on to the next spot? The best answer: Carry on, because there is no sense putting hundreds of deliveries at risk for a handful of papers.

In a couple of cases, bundles of papers were dropped more or less where they were supposed to be, but snowplows got to them before carriers did. The bundles were broken and the papers scattered.

Some carriers could not get to their papers, or could not get to homes in safety. Some carriers who use their vehicles to deliver could not find clear parking spots, which meant walking for five minutes. That delayed other deliveries — and of course, some carriers have to quit their routes at a certain time to get to other jobs.

What about Wednesday night? We were worried about those high winds taking out power lines, so we advanced all of our deadlines by a couple of hours in order to improve the chances of printing without problems, and to give drivers more time to make their rounds. Let’s hope those precautions were unnecessary.

On Wednesday morning we suspended the paywall, which means access to our full website is available to all, for free. The paywall will remain off until Friday morning at the earliest.

We also remind subscribers to use our E-edition, which is a digital replica of the printed newspaper. (It's included in print subscriptions, but you usually need to sign up for it. In case you have not signed up, don’t worry; go to https://digitaltimescolonist.pressreader.com/times-colonist for free access for the next couple of days.)

Thanks for your continuing support of the Times Colonist.

And now, back to shovelling.

Dave Obee is editor and publisher of the Times Colonist.