It’s been a while since we talked. Close to 30 years since my byline was on these pages the last time. A lot has changed since then, but we sometimes forget that much also stays the same.
It was 40 years ago last fall that we started Yorkton This Week – we being Bob Thom, Ed Betker and yours truly. Lorraine Betker is still there, Bob’s son Neil, who I’ve known since his youthful brat years is now the publisher, and I’m back for an occasional visit by way of this space.
Bringing back a column known then, and now, as My Two Bits seemed like a fun thing to do, if for no other reason than to baffle younger generations who likely have no clue what “two bits” are. We could have gone more up-to-date and called it My Two Cents Worth, but with the disappearance of the penny, well, that is outdated as well.
What you will find here, a couple of times a month, will be an eclectic collection of random thoughts and topics. At my age, random comes naturally, but I’ll try to put them in some logical order before committing them to paper. We will talk about lighter moments and some of life’s ups and downs, about our community and the bigger picture, politics and social issues, old-fashioned recipes and new technology.
What you won’t find here are rants and one-sided self-serving opinions, because those are a dime a dozen, and not very useful for constructive resolution of the problem we, individually and as a community, face from time to time. If you find me going in that direction, yank my chain. I have no intention of emulating Donald Trump – but that’s fodder for another column. My email address is at the bottom of this column, and your fair comments and arguments are more than welcome.
But I do have opinions (and recipes), and a perspective on Yorkton’s past half century that we can explore. One of the big changes in Yorkton in the past 50 years is the influx of new and younger residents from further afield, not just people from the area retiring here.
Maybe one of the contributions this old guy can make to our newer neighbours is a perspective of who we are and where we come from. And a suggestion that you don’t want to pronounce our province’s name as SaskatcheWAHN with the emphasis on the WAHN, but need to swallow the last syllable to make it SaskATCHewn. And that you need to profess to be a Roughrider fan even if you know nothing about football (or if you seriously question letting Weston Dressler and John Chick go).
Your comments are welcome. Email [email protected].
