Citizen at 40: Telling Brussels' stories for a quarter-century

BY SCOTT STEPHENSON

Sometimes, a correspondent for The Citizen finds the time and makes it work.

 

When then-editor Bonnie Gropp first asked Betty Graber-Watson to become the Brussels correspondent for The Citizen, she wanted no part of it. “I worked full time as a nurse, so I wasn’t around to know all that stuff, and I just kept saying, ‘Bonnie, I don’t know any of that stuff - I can’t do it,’” Graber-Watson recalled. “The way columns used to be, there was just always neighbourhood news - somebody always went to visit their kids, or had tea, or something.”

 

Nevertheless Gropp persisted. “Shorter story - we decided that if I just wrote something as if I was writing for my brothers, it might work. And that’s actually what I still do,” Graber-Watson told The Citizen. “I have four brothers. And they’re all different, and all over the place. So when I’m writing, I’m thinking - ‘will they care about that? Yeah, my brothers would.’ And then I’ll write it.”
Her first official column was printed in the Nov. 11, 1998 issue of the paper. The Presbyterian Church was celebrating 25 years with Joanne King as their music leader, the Legion observed Remembrance Day, and Peggy Cudmore had just turned 90. “It’s up to us to keep up the mood and pass on only the good stuff,” Graber-Watson wrote back then. 

 

She’s written many columns since that one, but hadn’t really thought about how long she’s been at it until The Citizen’s current editor, Shawn Loughlin, mentioned it the other day. “It just feels like routine,” she pointed out. “On either Monday or Tuesday, you just take an hour out of your day and just figure out something that needs to be said.”

 

In the decades since, Graber-Watson’s columns have reflected Brussels itself - pragmatic, perceptive, often philosophical. She sees the town’s strength in its ability to work together. “If people are clear about what is going on and get the right people to work with them, we can move mountains,” she declared. “And then what happens is you end up trusting the people that are in those other groups. And if you say, ‘Could you help me do this?’ and they say, ‘Yes, we can,’ it gets done.”

 

She points to the Brussels, Morris and Grey Community Centre, the 5R’s Thrift Shop, and the Soup and More program as just a few examples of what her community can achieve when it comes together. “If there’s a need there, or somebody sees a need, then, talk me into it!” she declared. “You’ll see that this group does this, and that group does that. When the Optimists or the Lions have a project, you can bet that the United Church will kick into it.”

 

In recent years, Graber-Watson has felt frustrated that the younger generations don’t often submit community news. “I get cross, sometimes, when the younger kids forget to put an ad in the paper about something,” she said. In her opinion, it’s a missed opportunity to build a stronger community. “They don’t realise that there’s a whole lot of people here with money that would be able to support them!”

 

Over the years, her column has become one of The Citizen’s most reliably enjoyable pocket universes - it’s frequently humorous, joyfully meditative and surprisingly human. “It’s really only been this last ten years, maybe, that I’ve even really thought more about death,” she reflected. Graber-Watson knows how much it hurts to lose a loved one, and uses her column to express compassion. “When somebody dies… you move out to people, and ask what they think about life and death. I’m comfortable with death, partly because I worked at a nursing home for years. I see it as a cycle of life. So I’m not afraid to die.”

 

For Graber-Watson, death is just another part of the trip - just another part of the story to report. “When I talk to the grandkids about death, I’ll say, ‘Well, you know how we go to Edmonton or we went to Portugal that time. It’s like that. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know what’s going on there. And you’ll probably see me sometime, but I don’t know when,’” she mused. “I’d like some of that stuff to get through to people that think that this is the end.”