By Janhabi Nandy
In the autumn of 2017, the Lowertown Echo had been out of publication for over a year. John Chenier had been serving for years on the Lowertown Community Association (LCA) Executive Committee, from where he had seen the Echoﹸs birth, growth and sunset. Upon leaving the LCA, he determined to revive the Echo, bringing his years of experience in publishing—and a strong vision of community.
For John, the Echo is a unique and critical way to knit together the fabric of Lowertown.
Lowertown is a very heterogenous community, unlike some other Ottawa neighborhoods. Tons of condo towers, a commercial district that doesn’t really belong to the community but to the city, heritage buildings, sections redeveloped in urban renewal, vast disparities. The Echo should reflect these various aspects and show commonality but also difference across the neighborhood.
This vision is realized in the positive community reception to the Echo John experienced, including when he delivered papers personally to homes. In better times, local businesses would advertise because they could support the free paper even if they didn’t need the exposure. There was a strong sense of camaraderie amongst the community members creating and supporting the Echo. The pandemic brought a lot of changes, some of which the Echo still confronts today, including a loss of advertising revenues. A fully volunteer-run paper is difficult to sustain, but John notes the tremendous talent in the neighborhood and all the people who are interested in contributing content.
As he steps away from the role of Editor this year, he reflects,
“I’ve really enjoyed working with all the people I’ve worked with on the Echo, and thankful for the people I could always depend on in the community to contribute and support the paper.”
Thank you, John, for the blood, sweat and tears that goes into keeping a volunteer-run community paper alive.
