When I arrived back in Lindsay in 2017 to kickstart the Advocate, I still remember the exhilaration I felt at finally coming home.

After a 20-year absence, returning only occasionally to visit my mom, I had finally gotten back to the town I love.

While many businesses and places had changed, many remained. The Olympia was still here – a beloved restaurant anchor. The Academy Theatre, always in a constant state of reinvention. Retailers like Kent Florist, Cathy Allan, Kent Books and many more.

And as the Advocate developed its social media pages, we began to share our articles and columns online. If you want to feel insecure about the future of humanity, though, just spend some time on Facebook message boards.

We might load an article about an intersection expansion and soon people are debating the “Liberal agenda on immigration.” Or an opinion piece on defence spending elicits profanity-fueled comments about how great Donald Trump is. Then someone else will chime in (perhaps all in caps, because at this point why not?) about how the city is getting bloated and we need to get back to the good old days of three men and a snowplow.

And it remains clear – from all manner of clues – that the least qualified among us usually have the most to say.

With social media message boards, an accomplished doctor and a 21-year-old high school dropout can both comment on a post with potentially equal algorithmic weighting – but the 21-year-old’s post will generate more engagement if he’s rude. Traditional media gatekeeping may have had some flaws, but it at least created consequences for incompetence – and none better than not being published.

For me, the town I had returned to looked like a postcard, as did idyllic villages around Kawartha Lakes, from Kinmount, Fenelon Falls and others. But the beauty I saw in our downtowns and green spaces, not to mention in the efforts of community-driven people, was not reflected on online message boards. Here, Lindsay was denigrated and run down by couch commanders, agents of hatred whose only purpose in life seemed to be to tear down.

At first, I tried to engage. One regular commenter seemed educated enough, but everything was negative. He had moved here from Toronto and didn’t seem to like anything about the community. I wrote what I believed to be a thoughtful post, suggesting he get involved and volunteer to make the kind of change he wished to see.

I received no response, of course, for that would have meant engaging in civil discourse, rather than pointless agitation. We choose to see what we want to see.

During my time away, professional theatre began to flourish at Globus Theatre, near Bobcaygeon. And since I returned nine years ago, in Fenelon Falls we now have the magical Grove Theatre. Incredible new businesses like The Pie Eyed Monk, Kindred Coffee Bar (in Lindsay and Bobcaygeon), Queen’s Bistro, and wonderful non-profits like Kawartha Community Foundation and Ampere have all come into their own.

As 2026 begins, I still carry with me a feeling of gratefulness to be back. Lindsay is growing, yes.

I’m just going to choose to grow along with it.