Peter Skene Ogden, Class of 1990. Go Eagles!
Allow me to introduce myself. I’m the new editor of the 100 Mile Free Press, a journey that feels very full circle since I grew up in the Cariboo and now call it home once again.
My first job in journalism was at the 100 Mile Advocate, one of two newspapers in town back in better times for the media. It was not the better paper of the pair, I have to admit, but it was a fun and formative place to work.
It was the summer of 1995.
Earlier that year, at 9:02 a.m. local time on April 19, a truck bomb assembled by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols detonated outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. On Oct. 3, OJ Simpson was acquitted of the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. In Quebec, residents were gearing up to vote on Oct. 30 in a referendum on separating from Canada, and on Nov. 21, the Dayton Accords ended a bloody three-year ethnic war in Bosnia. Amazon.com sold its first book. Jerry Garcia died and Mel Gibson’s Braveheart won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. I know these things because I love a good newspaper.
I would start that September my final year of journalism school and I felt very fortunate to have any journalism job to put on my resume once I had my degree in hand.
I took photos of events around town, wrote about the controversial ban on indoor smoking (imagine!), and come graduation time I helped assemble corsages for prom because the Advocate office was at the back of a floral shop whose name escapes me now.
That July word came to me of a dispute between a local rancher and a small group of First Nations camped at Gustafsen Lake, just west of 100 Mile. A few years earlier the Oka Crisis at Kanehsatà:ke erupted into a 78-day standoff between First Nations activists and RCMP that ended with the shooting of two protesters. A land dispute at Ipperwash Provincial Park that year in September would end with protester Dudley George shot dead by Ontario Provincial Police had yet to begin. I knew about these things because the media was there so I could read about them in the newspaper.
In the heat of the South Cariboo summer that July I probably just wanted to get out of the office. I met with the protesters at Gustafsen Lake and then drove on to the main house of the James Cattle Company, where I spoke with Lyle James and his wife.
Then the RCMP and the army and the national media arrived. In short, I found myself at the frontline of a pivotal event in history. I was hooked.
My career in journalism has taken me from Gustafsen Lake to Newfoundland and the remote Innu communities of Labrador, Iqaluit to the battlefields of Kandahar. Over that time I’ve watched the rise of conspiracy theories and growing attacks on the fourth pillar of democracy - an independent media - as self-serving social media algorithms sow doubt and discord.
I’ve watched as the media landscape has shrunk to a level dangerous to the survival of democracy and certainly damaging to the sense of community.
The South Cariboo is one of a fortunate few communities left with a newspaper and I hope it bucks the trend and stays that way. I’ll do my best to do my part.