The Coast Reporter’s New Year’s edition is perennially dedicated to recapping our print editions. But what caught online audiences' attention over the past 12 months?
Coming in at number five was our September story, “‘Beachcombers’ actors reunite for 50th anniversary of filming.” Shooting of the iconic Gibsons series began in September 1971 and Pat John, Bob Park and Nancy Chapple reunited for the first time since wrapping the first season. Jackson Davies, who joined the show as Constable John Constable in later years, also marked the occasion with the trio. They all gathered at The Persephone at the Five Corners on Gibsons Landing just a month before the boat was removed for restoration.
The fourth most popular story this year was “Ferry traffic overflows onto Highway 99 on July 1.” The Horseshoe Bay terminal was a bit nuts at the official start of Stage 3 of B.C.’s restart plan (remember those days?). According to DriveBC, lines reached Cypress Bowl Road in West Vancouver and BC Ferries advised passengers without reservations to travel via other terminals.
Top story number three is a relatively recent, but major nonetheless, story: “SCRD activates emergency operations centre for heavy rains.” This story was updated consistently through Nov. 15 – well into the evening – as the devastating atmospheric river storm delivered torrential rains, washouts and a whole host of infrastructure issues: boil water advisories, evacuation alerts, road closures and park closures.
The Coast Reporter’s second-most-read story came from columnist Richard Corbet back in March: “The moon is coming down to Earth… eventually” as he explained the leading theory on how the moon was created and how it will end. (That one I’m not going to try to summarize, you’re going to have to go read it for yourself.)
Finally, the top story of 2021? Well it was more like a series of stories: BC Ferries’ ill-fated proposal to the Sunshine Coast. The will-they, won’t-they saga of the Route 3 reservation system had Coast residents checking back regularly to see if the corporation would go ahead with a summer trial implementing 95 per cent reservation capacity and free reservations. They didn’t.
Honourable mention: I imagine the only reason the 41 days of Stage 4 water restrictions for those on the Chapman Water System wasn’t one of our top stories was because of the length of the crisis. We had many, many moderately well-read stories about the drought and its effects on our thirsty Coast.
