I think spring is here? The oval has closed up for the season and Otway is warning of gravel under some of their trails coming to the surface. I could have done with a couple more weeks of the weather we’d just been having — it honestly felt like the best of winter had finally come — but I’m sure lots of people are welcoming it.
On Saturday I went to see Alex Cuba perform with the Prince George Symphony Orchestra. “Do you know what we’ve done?” he asked the conductor at one point. “We have a sold out show — on a hockey night.” And indeed, it was a full house at Vanier Hall and, based on the parking lot as I went past, pretty close to a full house at the CN Centre for the Cougars, too, which is cool — it’s nice to see multiple major events do well in a single night.
Speaking of supporting things, Cinema CNC is returning! It was cancelled at the very last minute in March 2020 when the entire world stopped and has been on hiatus since. If you aren’t familiar, this is a film festival that started at CNC, hence the name, but has since traveled to different venues — and this year will be held at the Knox Performance Space, which I think will be very cool. The focus this time around is on Canadian films and you can browse through the trailers by scrolling through their website — it’s the sort of stuff you get at the Toronto and Vancouver International Film Festivals, and there’s definitely a few I’d like to check out. If you like going to the movies but aren’t a fan of our single-choice-of-theatre for most of the year, this is recommended.
The world has changed since Hell Yeah Prince George started ten years ago - but people still want to be connected
Mr. PG holding a 'Hell Yeah Prince George' flag in March 2016. (Chuck Chin)
I said on Friday it felt like I should write about this milestone and I did — over on the CBC website. You can read that if you’d like something focused on the site itself — Dave Mothus does a great job of reflecting on its place in the city — because what I wrote below really uses the anniversary as a jumping off point for thoughts about the state of the world generally. You’re forewarned. Here we go:
The big context, I think, is that in 2014 when the website was created Prince George was probably best known as the place Maclean’s had named “Most Dangerous City in Canada” (which itself was based on Stats Canada data, it wasn’t abritrary) and the idea that anybody would want to be here was something that got got some funny glances. Which isn’t to say you won’t still get questions if you decide to live here instead of, say, Vancouver or Victoria, but honestly it does seem like there’s a broader understanding of the positives of living here and while that’s not entirely because of HYPG, it at least partially is — because the page gave people a venue to be unabashed champions of the city in a way that didn’t really exist before, at least not for everyone, and that in turn has helped feed news stories, tourism campaigns, etc which get fed back into HYPG and on it goes in a circle of positivity.
The other thing to remember about 2014 is that Facebook felt much more powerful at the time and this led to some mixed feelings about the rise of alternatives to traditional media that were buoyed by its algorithm. 2014 was peak Upworthy, which you may remember as a website that, like HYPG, trafficked in positive-vibes only posts and generated stories like this one questioning if that was really a good thing. Ten years ago, Buzzfeed and the Huffington Post were the future of media and Hell Yeah Prince George, in some ways, felt like our own version of that, the most powerful new player in a world where more and more people were getting their news from scrolling on their phones as opposed to newspapers, radio casts or the 6 p.m. news. That’s why, when things like the renaming of Fort George Park to Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park happened there was so much contoroversy over whether posts celebrating that fact would be allowed on the page despite the backlash — because it felt like the most important game in town, at the time, the actual public square and there were stakes behind preventing certain voices from taking part.
Framed in those terms, ten years feels like an eternity ago. Buzzfeed and the Huffington Post and a bunch of other future-of-news internet startups are gone or diminished (Upworthy is apparently still around, but I honestly had no idea until I googled it for this post). Facebook remains arguably as dominant as ever, though it’s cultural cachet has been diminished by the rise of TikTok and the splintering of Meta’s audience into Instagram. And with those changes, so, too, has the place of Hell Yeah Prince George changed. As big as it is — more than 47,000 members as I write this, approximately 60 per cent of the city’s overall population — it doesn’t feel as big as it once was. And that’s because nothing feels as big as it once was. Everything is splintered and fractured into islands of understanding.
The big sites — the New York Times and the Facebooks and the CBCs — are bigger than everything else by a wider margin than they used to be, and yet, at the same time smaller than they once were, because medium-sized things are disappearing and the number of smaller things that have created their own mini-ecosystems is greater than ever. Shared spaces used to have people in them railing against the system because that was all they could do. Now there are just so many options people just leave, or aren’t even aware of the alternatives. This newsletter is part of that — for a dedicated set of readers it is the definitive news source of the day, replacing Facebook or Twitter or the local news sites’ homepages, but the vast majority of the population isn’t even aware it exists. On a related note, I recently discovered the existence of a videogame streamer named SmallAnt who has 1.4 million followers and is from (or possibly still lives?) here. He is arguably the most famous person to ever come from this city, based on sheer reach, and yet I, a person who knows things about this city for a living, had never heard of him. That’s the world we live in today.
In that context, Hell Yeah Prince George is one of those places where a shared sense of community still seems to exist. For one, it is tied to a physical location, so we are able to see sunsets and charity events and delicious looking food that we can actually experience ourselves. As traditional media has become diminished, it has served as a partial replacement for the classifieds, the coming events, and the community photos pages that we once relied on to bring us together. And, it should not be forgotten, it has done so largely based on the work of volunteers who have taken on a job that I would be hesitant to do even if you paid me — moderating a thriving online community means there’s a lot of anger and vitriol directed toward you that others rarely or never see, it’s why so many websites closed their comments long ago. I have regularly said in this newsletter that I rely on other news websites in order to bring you a roundup of what is going on in the city, it should be said that I rely on Hell Yeah Prince George! just as much — it is one of my key bookmarks to find out what is happening and what the highlights of the past 24 hours have been. It could also disappear tomorrow, if that’s what Mark Zuckerberg decides to do. But I think the lesson to take away from the page lasting as long as it has is that even as it can seem like we’re drifting apart, people still want a place to feel connected to each other and where they live, and as long as that’s the case, someone will find a way to make it happen.
A petition to bring back the Prince George Staples bathroom key
Sydney Redpath writes:
Not sure if you covered when the video of the office armrest bathroom key at our Staples went viral online. I can’t find the original Tik Tok, but here it is on IG still:
I was in Staples the other day and learned corporate saw the video and made them get rid of it (changing it back to a ruler)! In the most unserious/entirely serious of ways, I think that sucks. I remember that ridiculous bathroom key from when I was a kid, and it was fun to have friends that didn’t live in PG get a kick out of it from the video.
I have opinions about HYPG. It can be great in its authenticity, and it can also be a version of the prosperity gospel. A hundred people with few resources can do a thousand small, mostly unnoticed things that can be amazing for PG and its people. And then Aaron Switzer gets a platform once a year by throwing money at someone. I struggle with that kind of performance.
I'll leave it at that because the time change happened again and I need more coffee and it is still dark. Dammit, John Horgan!!!
we definitely have to be careful with the gospel of HYPG - and reflect on who the group serves, the voices the exclude, and the community it does foster.
I have opinions about HYPG. It can be great in its authenticity, and it can also be a version of the prosperity gospel. A hundred people with few resources can do a thousand small, mostly unnoticed things that can be amazing for PG and its people. And then Aaron Switzer gets a platform once a year by throwing money at someone. I struggle with that kind of performance.
I'll leave it at that because the time change happened again and I need more coffee and it is still dark. Dammit, John Horgan!!!
we definitely have to be careful with the gospel of HYPG - and reflect on who the group serves, the voices the exclude, and the community it does foster.