Meet the motley crew responsible for all the laffs
You may be wondering; what in the h-e-double hockey sticks is the Edville Gazette? Well, we like to think we’re a pretty great bunch (and so do our subscribers, thank you very much—ed.) but we prefer to let our readers think for themselves. So here’s a little bit about our motley crew, from the 1840s to the 2020s. If you like what you read, we’d be happy to have you over at the Gazette. If not, we humbly suggest joining the grousers on Twitter, or whatever it goes by now.
Then & Now
William Lyon Badger was a rock-ribbed news man, back in the day, and a damn good friend to George Brown (got this from the family archives—ed.). The two media tycoons played 9-ball pool and caught walleye together up there at French River, until they suddenly fell out over whether to establish a national newspaper in Toronto or in Edville.
So Brown went off and cobbled together The Globe in 1844, and the next year Our Founder launched the glorious Gazette, printing out two editions daily from his own barn.
Alas, as Edville residents well know, history is a cruel taskmaster.
It was a dark day indeed when William decommissioned the Gazette, corruption and graft in the corridors of power having forever scotched Edville’s destiny as a world-leading centre of industry and culture.
Fast forward to 2020.
The Founder’s great, great grandson Dick was rummaging around in the old barn, searching for a canister of insecticide that had been banned in the Seventies, and he stumbled upon a trove of charter documents for the long-forgotten Gazette.
He recognized in an instant that he could revive the newspaper at no cost to himself while claiming that it had been established in 1845, which it sort of was.
Dick decided that the main stylistic rule here at the Gazette is that every sentence start with a capital letter and end with a period. Our seasoned editors can insert the other stuff, as needed. Then he enlisted a few trusted friends and neighbours, along with some local ‘characters’ to write and manage the Gazette with him. Fast-forward three years, and Dick has himself a few hundred articles, a smattering of awards, a few thousand subscribers, and one heck of a team.
Who made the cut, you ask?
Our esteemed Editorial Board, and crew of lowly scribes, consist of the following:
Dick Badger is the editor-in-chief of the Edville Gazette and a damn fine guy, though even some of his closest friends might quibble with that. He drives an F-150 with a nine-inch lift and boss alloy hubs, and he doesn’t give a crap about anything beyond the tri-county area, except for whatever those dipsh*ts are getting up to in Ottawa.
Bertie Bertram is on the board because he’s Dick’s next-door neighbour and a retired teacher. Bertie’s fully sustainable. He drives one of those plug-in EVs, which he used to charge up covertly at Dick’s boathouse until Dick’s boy figured it out. For that, he nearly got voted off the board, but Dick said Bertie’s fat pension might come in handy if the Gazette ever gets into any legal tangles.
Hugo Blue is an antiquarian astrophysicist living incognito in Edville—in a Cold War bunker he refurbished with a National Research Council grant. He reports on science, nature and world events, and prefers celestial bodies, local wildlife, and his own paranoia to the company of other humans. Like most astronomers, he believes the news is best observed at a safe distance. No one on the Gazette staff has ever met him.
Hedi Bundt came to us from Germany, where she was for decades an iconic presence in the Freikoerperkultur (Free Body Culture) movement. Her passions are nude gardening, free love, world travel, and Herr Bundt. She writes about all things erotic and exotic, and claims that this is why so many strapping young lads in Edville are perennially interested in her peonies.
krystal_bb_diamondz16 💓writes the Gazette’s internationally acclaimed “Kids’ Corner” column. She attends high school in Northumberland County, where she leads a cadre of activist students whose main objective is to degrade English prose with text-talk and emojis. Her goal in life is to travel the world, ride her skateboard down the Great Wall of China and shake hands with Santa.
Edna Farmer is sixth-generation Edville. She heads up the Women’s Institute, the 4H and the local quilters’ guild, and she’s a “tough old bird who doesn’t take any guff,” as she likes to say. Edna brings homemade pastries to editorial meetings, which makes her the most indispensable board member.
Buster Fog has lived in the Cobourg area since the glaciers receded, as he likes to say. He covers the geezer beat, promoting intergenerational dialogue while illuminating the idiocies of Gen Zers, Millennials and Boomers. Buster’s obsessions are the great Frank Sinatra, his Tim’s crew, and his Missus, who went all the way to Grade Ten and helps him with punctuation.
Mabel Lean is a former supermodel and MENSA member. Owing to her many patents in the fields of pharmacology and jet propulsion, she now lives among the idle rich. She is the author of the wildly successful “Ask Mabel” column, in which she endeavours to improve the human species, mainly by making men smarter.
Jeff Mulette, Jr. is our dude in northwestern Ontario. He likes to party, watch sports, camp, fish, and party. His current beat is stories no one else wants to write, including YouTube exposés, celebrity breakups, and classic rock tribute shows. If the feds don’t repo his CERB savings, his plan is to work part-time as a Gazette intern until he qualifies for a Canada Council grant or pogey.
Roy Thomas Padgham came to us directly from London. You might remember him as the deceased drummer from the Grammy Award-winning synth band Flock of Men Without Dolby. It turns out this business of him being dead was just a cheap publicity stunt. Roy’s an alien, he’s a legal alien, he’s an Englishman in Edville. He’s also a snob, so he writes mainly about culchah.
Arthur Rampart is a full-time postie, which these days makes him the most important logistics manager in Edville. Artie lives on an island, commutes to work in a kayak, and hates being called Artie. As the internationally renowned author of “Artie’s Angle,” his main contribution during board meetings is to abstain on deadlocked votes, leaving the rest of us quarrelling into the wee hours.
Shirley Stickle is Edville’s only professional archivist and genealogist, which means she spends most of her day sniffing out people’s long lost ancestors to determine whether they held title to vast tracts of valuable real estate or ever did serious jail time. She is crazy for history, as she likes to say, but not the kind where you just make stuff up.
That’s about it for us. The Gazette isn’t your picture-perfect publication, to be sure; but, if you ask our subscribers, we’re better (much better—ed.).
An article from The Edville Gazette appears on News Now Network sites once a week. There is also a podcast for your listening delight https://anchor.fm/radiofreeedville
