2 • Sports Pad 4 • Editorials 8 • Sports 15 • Obituaries
The
THIS WEEK
Citizen
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Friday, May 17, 2024
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Volume 40 No. 20
Publications Mail Agreement No. 40050141 Return Undeliverable Items to North Huron Publishing Company Inc., P.O. Box 429, BLYTH, ON N0M 1H0
HE rec. charges discussed By Shawn Loughlin The Citizen
Up the creek On Saturday, despite the relatively cold and wet conditions, the Seaforth Optimist Club went ahead with its annual rubber duck race as yet another fundraiser for the club. The winning ducks were Number 356 in first place (the betting favourite), Number 118 in second
place (a bit of a surprise there) and Number 499 in third (a real dark horse - or dark duck - in this race). The ducks weren’t alone out there, however, as many community members and duck owners came out to cheer on the rubber competitors. (John Stephenson photo)
Spawned by a request from Councillor Jeff Newell, Huron East Council discussed its new recreation rates at great length last week and how they are affecting the municipality’s user groups and service clubs. Newell had asked for a report on the increased rates, which council had approved, and staff returned with that report at council’s May 7 meeting. However, council has opted to not change any of the rates that were approved in January, but instead directed staff to prepare a report on how the municipality can otherwise support Huron East’s service groups while keeping its rates and fees as they are. The initial motion to consolidate fees was made in an effort to make things consistent across the municipality after staff realized that halls and arenas in Huron East were being rented for different prices and completely inconsistent with one another. As a result, Brussels user groups were disproportionately affected due to years of being undercharged, according to Huron East, meaning that costs in Brussels had risen to meet costs in Vanastra and Seaforth, but resulted in what has been perceived as a drastic price hike. “Following the approval of the Continued on page 10
Alice Munro, Huron’s Nobel Laureate, dies at 92 By Shawn Loughlin The Citizen Alice Munro, the Nobel Prizewinning author and Huron County native who made a career out of committing rural Ontario’s stories to paper, has passed away at the age of 92. Her family shared the news of her passing on Monday night at her care home in Ontario with The Globe and Mail. Munro had been living with dementia for over a decade. For years, Munro was a fixture of Huron County life, maintaining a home in Clinton and frequenting restaurants and coffee shops in Blyth and Goderich while also regularly patronizing the Blyth Festival theatre shows. Munro was born Alice Ann Laidlaw in Wingham in 1931. She would go on to study at the University of Western Ontario before moving to British Columbia with James Munro, her first husband. There, they would open
Munro’s Books in Victoria, which still operates today. Over the course of her career, which spanned over 50 years, Munro published over a dozen original short story collections, many of which were lauded by readers and critics alike and won awards. Three times she won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and was nominated twice more. She’s won the Giller Prize twice, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Trillium Book Award and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. In 2013, Munro won the Nobel Prize in Literature and was hailed as a “master of the contemporary short story.” Two years later, Canada Post would issue a special Munro stamp to celebrate her Nobel Prize win. Munro only wrote one play over the course of her career, entitled How I Met My Husband. It was staged as part of the 1976 Blyth Festival, its second season. It was scheduled to be part of the 2020
Festival season, but those plans were dashed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Festival has not revisited the play since. Her 2001 collection, entitled Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage spawned a pair of creative works. Away From Her, the 2006 film, earned Academy Award nominations for star Julie Christie and director and writer Sarah Polley and was based on “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” while Marcia Johnson adapted one of the book’s stories into Courting Johanna, a play that would grace the Blyth Festival stage during the 2008 season. Munro was an early supporter of the Blyth Festival, championing it any chance she had. She was even named an Honorary Chairperson for the capital campaign for a new addition to Memorial Hall, which now houses the current entrance to the hall, the Bainton Gallery (home of the Blyth Festival Art Gallery) and the box office.
Long heralded as a champion for her home community, Munro would often set her stories in Huron County, telling the stories of the area and its people, usually focusing on women and girls. She was lauded by her fellow writers who praised her craftsmanship and precision in writing. Munro will forever stand as one of the true masters of the devilishly difficult form of the short story. In 1968, Munro published her first collection, Dance of the Happy Shades, which won her the Governor General’s Award, followed by the revered Lives of Girls and Women in 1971. She continued, consistently writing a book every four years or so, with Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You (1974), Who Do You Think You Are? (1978), The Moons of Jupiter (1982), The Progress of Love (1986), Friend of My Youth (1990), Open Secrets (1994), Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001),
Runaway (2004), The View from Castle Rock (2006), Too Much Happiness (2009) and Dear Life (2012). Dance of the Happy Shades, Who Do You Think You Are? and The Progress of Love all won Governor General’s Awards. In the wake of her Nobel Prize win, several Huron County municipalities have sought to celebrate her achievements and share in the success, commissioning benches, parks, signs, plaques and more. Furthermore, the Alice Munro Festival of the Short Story has become one of the county’s premier arts festivals, attracting authors like Emma Donoghue, Michael Ondaatje and Margaret Atwood to events over the years. In the hours after news of Munro’s passing broke, the Township of North Huron passed along its condolences. “On behalf of the Township of North Huron, we are deeply saddened to learn about the passing Continued on page 11