Newsletter Archive | Back to Island Voices

July 2014

As Canadians to tend to be very modest when it comes to acknowledging good news stories about ourselves or of our endeavors. Media-wise we are force fed on a daily basis a diet of other people’s personal tragedies, which is depressing and I think unnecessary and must contribute in some way to the tidal wave of depression we now face.

Enough, we need more good news stories!!! 

The article below is taken from the ‘About Us’ page of our sister site www.islandwoman.ca and needs no further comment from me. What it did for me was to make me more aware that we need not only to celebrate good news but also the need to recognise and publicly thank those who were a party to its success.

Congratulations to the whole team at Island Woman.

In 2007, I thought there was a need for a place where articles written by local Island women on subjects of interest to them could be read. So as a rainy day project I registered the web domain www.islandwoman.ca, just in case …

Fast forward to 2011. I still felt that Island Woman was good idea, so building on the experience I had with my husband (Roy) in creating and developing www.seniors101.ca, I decided to do it. Fortunately, Josie Byington, the computer technical support person whom Roy uses for Seniors 101, was willing to join us to create and develop the new site. Josie also introduced me to Diana Matsuda who has been the editor since day one, long before we went public in August 2012. Diana has played a huge part in the success that is now Island Woman. Diana not only deals with each of our 30-plus writers submitting articles each month and putting them online, she is also a great source of knowledge, balance and patience.

As we approach our 2nd anniversary, from the perspective of our readership, every month since we started has been better than the month before. This reinforces for us that our concept of having Island Woman designed ‘by and for the women of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands’ was the right one.

The true reason for our success is of course our writers who are all Island women. Their writing abilities are awesome, each written in their own incredible way, as they create articles on any subject that they are passionate about. ‘Who they are’ covers all stages of womanhood, from young women at university, single women, mothers with young children to grandmothers.

Together their articles leave no doubt in my mind that Island women are indeed amazing.

Thank you all so much.

Patricia Summerhayes
Publisher, Island Woman 

So on that basis I would like to thank Trish, my wife, and Josie Byington, my technical support since 2007, for the their patience, support and generosity on the journey that has been Seniors 101 and the success that we have achieved.

Roy Summerhayes.

P.S. What island people success stories would you like to share? Send them to me at seniors101@shaw.ca and as long as they are vaguely legal I will share them with our readers. Thank you.