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Beyond our borders
One of the reasons we founded this newspaper - was it really seven and a half years ago? - was to celebrate the wonderful people who call Uxbridge home. Each week within these pages, you read about special people of all ages, from all walks of life. The subjects of this week’s “Cup of Coffee” (page 3) and “Tiger Talk” (page 8) demonstrate the range of fascinating folk we write about - the middle-aged proprietor of a bowling alley who doubles as a hockey statistician, and a 14-year-old girl with a passion for music. Each of them with a very interesting outlook on life.
As much as we enjoy spotlighting these people in the Cosmos, we realize that for the most part, our particular cosmos has limited boundaries (unless our website is a lot better read than we think). So it’s very exciting when Uxbridgers receive attention in the media beyond our borders.
One example this week was an article in the Toronto Star talking about a local handyman named Paul Mateciuk. Most of the ink Paul has received in the Cosmos has been in advertising for his business as the “Right Hand Man”, building decks and fences in the summer, and plowing snow in the winter. We also gave him a lot of free press a couple of years ago when he ran for Uxbridge Council in Ward 5. He did pretty well, as we recall.
In the last couple of years, Paul’s become known for another community service, and that was the subject of the piece in the Star. On a regular basis in the winter, he takes his wee tractor onto the ice of Elgin Pond and plows hockey rinks for the town’s shinny artists to practise their skills on. It’s a job that Brian Evans and his boys used to do by hand, but most of those boys are married and moved away now, so Paul took up the torch. We got a call from a friend in Toronto (a big fan of Uxbridge, since his daughter lives here) asking if we’d noticed the story in the Star. Yes, we answered proudly, Paul Mateciuk is typical of the good folk who live in our little town.
Now Paul’s been here a good many years, while the fellow featured in our story on page 12, who is going to be on national television this Sunday night, facing the legendary panel in the Dragons’ Den, is a more recent arrival. Kevin Cochran, with his wife and three children, came to Uxbridge a couple of years from lower down in the GTA, seeking to escape the suburban sprawl and find a better place to raise the kids. Like many young families, they heard about Uxbridge from a friend, paid a visit and fell in love with the ambience. Only a couple of weeks after moving into Wooden Sticks, they were lured by the sounds of the Fall Fair, and as Kevin told us, decided then and there that Uxbridge was a “happening place”.
It is indeed, which is why we love to write about it. And what makes it a “happening place” are the people who inhabit it, both the natives whose families have lived here for generations, and the immigrants who couldn’t resist it. Your editor, who like Kevin first experienced the wonders of Uxbridge at the Fall Fair, intended to work and play here for a season or two, and he’s still around 17 years later.
Perhaps it’s something in the water.
November 22, 2012
July 14, 2011
