Newspaper purchase a life-changing event.

• Author: Atkins, Michael
• Position: President's Note

I was 25 when I came to Sudbury for the first time 30 years ago. I can say with the assurance of hindsight that I did not have a clue what I was getting in to.

Of course it was not the first time or the last time I would act without a clue, but as things would turn out, it was one of those life-changing moments you only recognize when you have survived.

It was high adventure.

It started in Little Current, Manitoulin Island, where I was running the Manitoulin Expositor for an old friend Rick McCutcheon.

For a number of reasons, too numerous to enumerate here, I had bought a building in Little Current and moved the newspaper on short notice to a new home. Let's just say we were leaving a landlord who no longer wished to provide the Expositor a home (even though we paid our rent) because of our editorial stance on matters important to him.

Some months later a fellow showed up at my office door in Little Current selling carpet for the House of Broadloom here in Sudbury. He was the scion of a rich family from southern Ontario and he had managed to lose the family fortune (a construction company) in relatively short order. Subsequently he decided to disappear to a small constituency not far from Parry Sound, far from his Hamilton roots, where he eventually became Reeve. He drove to Sudbury during the week and sold carpet for Ron Lewis and Cam Stewart.

I explained to this interloper that although it was clear my building would look nicer with carpet, we had managed to get the paper out last week without it, and on balance I had more important things to spend my money on.

He was persistent. We retired to the Anchor Inn for a beer. Some 20 beers later, (financed by my new friend, which might be a clue as to why he lost the family fortune) we stumbled from the Anchor Inn and retired to my cabin to sleep it off. In the morning I promised if he would go away I would come to Sudbury on my motorcycle in a week or two and look at carpet.

I had very little interest in buying carpet, but it was a good run on the bike and I kept my promise within the month.

When I arrived at the House of Broadloom there was no sign of the Reeve, but Ron Lewis, one of the proprietors, was in. He inquired if I was the fellow from Manitoulin who ran the newspaper. I replied in the affirmative.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

With little fanfare he explained that he and his partner were the proprietors of a weekly newspaper in Sudbury called Northern Life. It had replaced a previous...