Wandering the cosmos

by Conrad Boyce, founder of the Uxbridge Cosmos

This “Wandering” first appeared on Sept. 7, 2006, a year after the Cosmos began publishing.

Wonderful Wednesdays

There are a lot of things I love about the unique job of creating this newspaper every week, especially now that I’m doing it pretty well by myself. I enjoy the daily contact with the readers, getting their feedback, and especially their ideas, and learning more and more each week about how this community works. I enjoy the challenge of working with advertisers on how to best get their message across. I enjoy the stimulation of laying out the paper, exercising the artistic side of my brain that’s lain dormant for so many years. Needless to say, I enjoy the writing and the photography, and I even have fun doing the books; it takes me back to when I used to help my accountant father.

All the above aspects of the job, of course, primarily employ the mind, although the fingers are pretty important too, but one part of the weekly routine that I’ve come to cherish is almost totally mindless, and I suppose that little break is pretty important when it comes to R&R.

Uxbridge Cosmos founder and original publisher Conrad Boyce, centre, with his wife, Lisa, and an unnamed friend. Cosmos file photo

Wednesday morning and early afternoon is when I do my little paper route, delivering the Cosmos to all the post offices so that they can have it in your mailbox reliably every Thursday. Sometimes, because I’m a one-man operation, that schedule gets delayed a bit; the arrival of one’s grandson, for instance, is something that takes priority, and most of the information in the paper will still be valuable if you see it on Friday. But most weeks it’s Thursday, meaning I deliver it on Wednesday.

The paper usually comes off the press in Newmarket about 8:30 a.m. If there’s an insert, that means it’s all done, neatly wrapped in bundles of 100 lying on a pallet, by about 10:30. So about 10 o’clock I shut off the computer, bundle my trusty canine companion, Lacey, into my equally trusty Dodge Caravan, Sherwood (so named because of its forest green colour), and the three of us hustle off down Davis Drive.

In the winter, with the windows closed, I’ll usually have something on the radio. But in the summer Lacey and I prefer the windows open, and the noise makes any music pointless. The trip to Newmarket takes about 25 minutes, Lacey riding shotgun all the way, unless the sun is beating down, and she needs to retreat into the back.

Once in Newmarket, after a brief visit with the folks in the printing plant, most of whom know Lacey‘s name, even if they’re not sure of mine, I slug the 8,000 papers into the van, which can be easy or hard depending on the size of the paper, but it’s always a bit messy since the ink isn’t 100 per cent dry by the time I arrive. It’s the one brief interlude of purely physical work that I experience each week, and I very much look forward to it. Lacey, although she’s supposedly a ‘working dog’, is no help at all.

Once packed with the hot-off-the-presses Cosmos, we retrace our steps to Uxbridge, where more than 3/4 of the papers are unloaded (routes with Goodwood or Sandford addresses also go out from there). Sherwood is now light again, and Lacey looks forward most to the Uxbridge PO, because the staff there enjoy giving her biscuits. They’re on the top shelf of a metal cabinet, to which Lacey makes a beeline as soon as we pull in, and each PO employee gives her a biscuit. She also gets a treat at a couple of other stops along the route, but at Uxbridge she gets several. Lacey gets a little heavier on Wednesdays.

Now that Uxbridge has its papers, it’s time for the rural POs, those which deliver to, or have boxes for, people living within the township of Uxbridge. There are six of them, only one of which is itself in the Township: Leaskdale; Sunderland, which delivers to the east side of Wagner‘s Lake; Udora (the PO is actually in Georgina); Sutton, which delivers to most of the Zephyr area; Mount Albert, which deliver to the rest of the northwest corner; and Stouffville, which delivers to the south west corner.

I drive to them all in the above order. Hwy. 1 up to Leaskdale, up Hwy. 12 and over to Sunderland, back through Vallentyne to Udora, across Old Shiloh Road and up Park Road to Sutton, down Hwy. 48 to Mount Albert and Stouffville, then back home via Webb Road and Conc. Seven. It takes about two hours and it’s a delightful drive. I watch the changing seasons as the weeks go by, Lacey and I chat, solving the world’s problems, and unless we pass a squirrel, she’s pretty laid-back.

Wednesdays are wonderful.