The City of North Bay’s Centennial Celebration brings with it a fantastic opportunity to look back at the community’s foundations and pivotal moments – which helps everyone understand our potential moving forward. Our Winter 2025 Edition is step in the right direction with copies now available at Darkhorse Comics, Allison the Bookman, North Bay Museum, Callander Museum, 176 Lakeshore and East End Variety, with more to be added next week.
The 16th edition since 2021 packs a trainload of nostalgic stories and historical features spread across 28 pages of glossy colour on quality paper. And we’re proud of our consistently eye-catching covers, we hope it makes you feel you want to keep the publication forever. It also acts as a directory to a multi-media network of story-telling, with some articles and photos referring to more video interviews, podcasts and related features. Examples of digital story-telling mentioned in the magazine include the 70th anniversary milestone piece about Photo Metro, Dan Clement’s North Bay Roughriders 1956 jacket quest and the Kennedy Fall Fellowship.
Small Town Times Productions is the publisher, officially, owned by me. Aside from this website, there are two Facebook pages (Back in the Bay Magazine and Small Town Times) and a YouTube channel: Dave Dale’s Small Town Times. I’m not very involved in the other platforms, although I have accounts that I use sparingly. There’s LinkedIn, which is kind of boring; Twitter, way too exciting; and Instagram, the worst interface ever.
You can also follow my story-telling journey through the NorthBayEcho.ca Community Podcast Network. Sign up for the free weekly digital newsletter and get timely notifications of new content. Have you seen our Echo Sportscast? Nobody is covering local high school and post secondary sports like we do.
I’m back writing at BayToday, this time with a monthly series called ‘100 Years of North Bay’. Here’s the first one that tied the 100th birthday party for Bill Parfitt, a Second World War veteran and farmer, to several other long-established family clans that are part of the deep roots in the area. If you search my name on the Village Media site, you can find more than 80 columns written weekly between June 2021 and February 2023.
Directly below is the table of contents page for the Winter Edition.
The ‘Soaring Shadfly Logo’ turned out to be a popular creation for people who link North Bay with the iconic insect, even when they emerge from Lake Nipissing and smother light poles and storefronts each summer. T-shirts, hoodies and hats are available for sale out of Laporte’s Nursery and Greenhouses on Lakeshore Drive (near the Steve Omischl Sports Fields Complex in West Ferris).
None of it would be possible without the support of content contributors, subscribers and advertisers – please accept my heartfelt appreciation to those who see the value of such an enterprise. We survived all kinds of challenges together, including a pandemic, and special thanks to Beatty Printing for providing such super service. Specifically, I’d like to tip my hat to both Pat Madill Stamp and Nancy Avery for their series of columns and support.
While they are taking a break this issue, we have put together an index of their articles in case anyone wants to read from their collection in back issues. See Page 15. With four more magazines scheduled this year (Spring in April, Summer in July, Fall in September and Winter in December), there’s a lot to be excited about with a variety of Centennial events throughout 2025.
The official date of signing the city’s incorporation papers is April 14 (my mom’s birthday by the way), North Bay is hosting the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities Conference May 5-8 under the heading of ‘The Next 100 Years’, Centennial Concerts and Drone Shows (July 18, Aug. 29 and Sept. 26), Mayor’s Picnic Aug. 3, Centennial Celebration of Sport Sept. 20, Time Capsule Sealing Oct. 1, among many others. Watch for detail updates and new events to be posted on the city website (under ‘Our Community’ in the Festivals-Events section).
We’re excited to be part of North Bay’s Centennial Celebration – it’s providing a nice diversion from the chaotic political machinations of Canada and the United States. To help the Back in the Bay Magazine and receive the next four editions, please subscribe by emailing your address and e-transferring $40 to [email protected] Cheque, cash and credit cards are also accepted.
Writer, photographer and proud father. My mom's family is from the Soo with its Algoma Highlands, dad hailed from Cobden in the Ottawa Valley and I spent my teen years in Capreol. Summers were at the beach on the Vermillion River and winters at 'The Rink.' Born in East York but Toronto never was my thing. Ever since a kid looking out the window on long trips, I imagined living on the highway in a little house with a big yard and trees growing all around me.
