The Catalyst for The Times

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One Year Later

Christmas 1998

We'd been back in Windsor for six months. Entrepreneurs for well over a decade, we had hoped by now to be lucratively involved in various business ventures: Chris in internet consulting, Elaine doing freelance writing and fitness consulting. After 8 years away, we were virtually starting over; things were not happening as quickly as we liked.

Elaine's older brother Howard was down from Toronto for the holidays and we were talking after dinner one night about how there was no way to promote her personal fitness services directly in the Walkerville area other than a "blanket ad" throughout the entire city of Windsor. "Why not start your own paper?" suggested Howard, "and you can advertise in that."

Now most people would have said, "Are you nuts?" but since Chris and Elaine had worked on newspapers in the past, we said, "Why not?"

A couple of days later, after conducting some research on Hiram Walker, the founder of Walkerville, Elaine started getting excited by how much fascinating history we had here. We realized that this paper could really be something.

We decided that our approach to the Times would be to present a perspective of Walkerville that embraced it's unique past while celebrating the people and places that provide its character today. Possessing all the technical gear- and expertise from years in the advertising and web publishing business- we managed to crank out the first edition in two months, right from our dining room.

The paper was an instant hit with people young and old. It's opened up a lot of doors for us and we're now doing corporate Internet development and advertising and marketing work. Plus we're busy developing various Walkerville promotional items like posters, "Images of Walkerville" photo cards, postcards, (if you'd like to know more, email us: editor@walkervilletimes.com) and so on. With each addition, the paper gets bigger (from 8 pages to 16 in three issues) and now Elaine has no time for her fitness business.

Life's like that, isn't it?