Tenacious, outspoken, honest, strong — family and friends speak about Chantelle Hole “‘My God,’ he said, ‘there’s not one person that has a thing bad to say about her.’” Chantelle’s mother Jennifer Shirreff said the investigator told her this while working on the case of the death of her daughter, Chantelle Hole. Or Chantellie, to friends and family. “She was always so…

As I was putting the paperback fictions on the shelves in our store, I found one with a picture of a Yad — a pointer for reading the Jewish Bible — on its cover. With 330 pages of nicely-spaced text, it looked like a book I could get through quickly. …

The first book I picked out of our new Book Nook collection was the 1974 thriller The Last Canadian, the first novel by journalist William C. Heine. “TERRIFYING!” states the cover. After the first few chapters, I felt that description was apt. But after I’d finished the last page, I…

Hello. I’m Allendria. I’m the publisher of the Athabasca Advocate weekly newspaper, and I’m looking for a general reporter to start immediately. The Advocate serves a community of about 10,000 people. Nestled between Alberta’s boreal forest and the prairies, the Athabasca is a refuge between Edmonton and Fort McMurray. As…

Rural Alberta has a drug problem. Anyone who has spent any time in a courtroom can see that. In case after case, guilty pleas come along with remarks on drug use and addiction — usually alcohol, meth, fentanyl and other chemicals that wreak havoc on bodies and minds. Why do…

I like to see the people around me succeed. Last week, talking to someone I consider a mentor, he said something along those lines. I realized that about myself, too. I thought about the stories, resumes and marketing plans I have edited over the years. I remembered a moment a…

Within these pages there has been the occasional attempt at dialogue that has devolved into a written shouting match. There have been fights about the rights of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples, and there have been heated discussions about the current ruling parties of the country and province. These fights have flowed…

Full disclosure: I have a vested interest in the success of our communities. When the region is doing well economically, the newspapers tend to do well, too. And so, when the region isn’t that hot on the financial front and people take their dollars elsewhere to spend, whether it’s on…

It may be cliché to say, but it’s hard to believe that a year has passed since the Fort McMurray wildfire, when thousands of evacuees flowed into the Town & Country region. It has been a year since an entire city of people were packed into cars, trucks and busses…