(The article written about musician Kathleen Edwards’ foray into the coffee shop business, with the popular Quitters opening on Stittsville Main, was just one of the first articles that Glen Gower introduced on his newly introduced website, Stittsville Central, in September 2014.)
Wow! How has it already been a decade? I launched Stittsville Central in 2014 and managed it for the first four years, and recently current editor Lesley McKay asked me to share some of my memories of the early years. So I started looked through my archives.
The idea for Stittsville Central was kicking around in my head in mid-2014. We had a bi-weekly community newspaper in Stittsville (the now-defunct Stittsville News), but it seemed to be getting more and more ad-heavy and it wasn’t great for breaking news. There was so much happening in Stittsville that it wouldn’t fit within the confines of a traditional community newspaper!
Mainstream local media had started their retreat from neighbourhood coverage, and Facebook and other social media were really starting to take off. Residents were craving information – but there was also a lot of mis-information being shared online (sound familiar?!)
I was getting more involved with community groups and I saw a web site as a way to advance awareness and action on some of the issues important to me – heritage, planning, Stittsville Main Street, a new public high school, and building community in general.
Stittsville was growing and changing so quickly! What was once a quiet rural village was now one of Ottawa’s fastest growing suburbs. I was curious about the interesting new people and businesses moving in. What affect did this growth have on the people who already lived here? How could we maintain the values and charm of the old village as we continued to grow? Those were the kind of stories that weren’t being told anywhere else, and that I thought we might be able to explore.
Potential alternate names for Stittsville Central from a brainstorming session in early August 2014:
- Stittsville Source
- Stittsville Comet
- Stittsville Coyote
- Stittsville Rising
- Stittsville Bytes
- Stittsville Hub
- Hazeldean Herald
- Stittsville Today
- Stittsville Beacon
- Stittsville Voice
I decided on StittsvilleCentral.ca as the name, and it was a bit tongue-in- cheek. In 2014 (and maybe not so much now?), Stittsville was a far-flung suburb and not really central to anything so it was a deliberately self-depricating moniker. (It was probably also influenced by a web site called SDNCentral, a software trade publication that I referenced a lot at my job at a local tech start-up at the time.)
The site launched on Labour Day weekend, September 1, 2014. The plan was to publish two or three posts per week, with articles, photos, maps, graphs, and videos. We would accept contributions from the community but it wasn’t an open editorial policy; the content had to fall within the mission and mandate of the site. My goal was to sell ads to local businesses to cover any admin costs, and hopefully hire a student to write original content. And we would be hyper-focused on Stittsville but occasionally cover stories in surrounding communities: Kanata, Carp, Richmond.
Some very early headlines on the site:
- Kathleen Edwards is opening a coffee shop in Stittsville
- Mould, leaks, rust and more: GRC Pool won’t open until May 2015
- Attention job hunters: Tanger Outlets is hosting a job fair
- Route 96A will be two minutes longer this year
- Future Stittsville will include 70,499 friendly neighbours
- Demolition permit issued for 1518 Stittsville Main Street
Within days we had hundreds of visits to the site; and within a few weeks we had thousands of regular readers. My vision for the site was always to keep residents more informed, interested and engaged in our community. There have been so many people over the years who have contributed their talents and ideas to StittsvilleCentral.ca, many behind the scenes. The local business community was very supportive, and eventually I was able to pay a number of freelance writers, many of them local students.
A few folks who have been instrumental in the site’s success:
- Barry Gray, who joined early on as a volunteer photographer. His photos of people, places, and events in the community brought the site alive.
- Devyn Barrie, who ran the site for six months in 2018 when I stepped aside to run for City Councillor. Devyn started as a freelance writer while still in high school, and went on to graduate from the journalism program at Algonquin College.
- And of course, Lesley McKay and Russ Mason. They took over from Devyn in 2018 and have been running the site for nearly six years!
Ten years and 4,800 posts later, Lesley and Russ and many volunteers continued to keep the vision alive in the community. They’ve done an incredible job despite a lot of challenges, and I’m thrilled that the site has continued to keep residents connected.
Congratulations Stittsville Central on ten years in our community!
Some of my favourite posts from the first four years:
- Crab apple tree leads archeologists to a lost farm near Tanger
- Meet Elizabeth Kondruss, curator of Stittsville’s Barbie museum
- IN DEPTH: John Curry carries on, despite the demise of the Stittsville News
- Late-night dog walk leads to arrest in Fairwinds vehicle thefts
- How would you like to live on Velociraptor Avenue?
- HODGINS HOUSE: They paved paradise, put up a Mattress Mart
- LETTER: The Tragically Hip have a really special place in my heart
- Following Poole Creek
- LOST & FOUND: How Kathleen Edwards got her guitar back
- A FINE BALANCE: Study looks at why Goulbourn wetlands are changing
- THE ZOOMING 60s: The start of Stittsville’s explosive growth
- Here’s why the Hazeldean bridge sank in 2011
- Oops! We tore down your heritage farmhouse
- PHOTOS: Last night of bingo at the Stittsville Legion
- MID-CENTURY MODERNIST: A look at the architecture of Amberwood Village
- HIGH & DRY: Stittsville’s prohibition-era Temperance Hotel
- Turtles hatch at Stitt Street Park!
- Musician Jim Bryson finds his place back home in Stittsville
- FOOD TRUCKS: Sandwich sorcery at The ‘Wiches Cauldron’
- Stittsville student launches neighbourhood podcast
- George Escher donates famous father’s art to National Gallery
- Stittsville rapper pays tribute to Main Street Pub with new EP
- PHOTOS: Traditional letterpress printing with Gaia Java’s Paul Jay
- Sacred Heart students to help care for 100-year-old forest
- Boyd House: The old stone home at 173 Huntmar
- Grade 10 student by day, rock/punk impresario by night
- Endangered snapping turtle back home after stint in Peterborough trauma hospital
- 55-year-old b-boy represents Stittsville at hip hop festival
- Musician Kathleen Edwards is opening a coffee shop in Stittsville
THANK YOU FOR YOUR INTEREST AND CURIOSITY WHICH LEAD TO A VERY SUCCESSFUL AND INFORMATIVE PUBLICATION – CLIFF BOARD
Communications: the gift that keeps on giving. Great initiative.