It was a blustery, thundery night on March 14.
Not that we knew, because we were shut into a tiny office with windows the size of postage stamps.
It had started as a reasonably normal Saturday. Rural reporters, as you may be aware, don't really get days off. I had just come back from doing a few interviews at the Music Festival. Luke had stopped by a 100th birthday party. And Alex was on his way back to the office from Rich Lake, photographing horse-and-wagon teams.
It was a blustery, thundery night on March 14.
Not that we knew, because we were shut into a tiny office with windows the size of postage stamps.
It had started as a reasonably normal Saturday. Rural reporters, as you may be aware, don’ t really get days off. I had just come back from doing a few interviews at the Music Festival. Luke had stopped by a 100th birthday party. And Alex was on his way back to the office from Rich Lake, photographing horse-and-wagon teams.
We hunkered down at our desks right around when the polls for the Progressive Conservative nomination vote closed at 7 o’ clock. We compiled a contact list of all of the candidates, PC staff, and the editor of our sister paper in St. Paul, where the vote counting was taking place for the Lac La Biche-St. Paul-Two Hills nomination vote. We sat down and waited.
PC staff told us that the ballots had to be driven from each of the polling stations, including the one in Lac La Biche, to St. Paul for counting. They expected results around 9 p.m. But when I called again around 8:30, they told me things were taking a little bit longer - they probably wouldn’ t be ready until 10:00.
We found ways to pass the time. We took turns playing pump-up music. We put on a pot of coffee. We played a few rounds of an online game that basically asks people to come up with the dirtiest jokes possible. Well after 9:00, we were told vote-counting hadn’ t even begun.
We twiddled our thumbs, tapped our desks, and paced around the block. More coffee. More check-in texts. As the clock ticked closer to midnight, I kept worrying that we were just missing the announcement. By quarter to one, we started to get desperate. Unsure how much longer we’ d be there, I shot off to Corner Gas, returning with protein bars, pepperoni sticks and lots of Red Bull.
Then, at around 2:00 in the morning, we finally heard the news via text message. Darrell Younghans had won the nomination. The newsroom went from eerily quiet to loud at once, as we all scrambled to call the winner, the losers, the returning officers, anyone with useful information.
Before long, we had two definitive stories ready about the vote’ s outcome. 1,800 people voted, and it took three runoff rounds to declare a winner. So that’ s why it took so long.
So if any of you saw one of the POST reporters on Sunday looking like warmed-over death, now you know why
Sure, there weren’ t many people staying up, hoping for a POST story about a Progressive Conservative nomination vote in the wee hours on a Sunday. But that’ s not the point. We stayed up and stayed at it because we were committed to break the news first and best. This might be a small-town paper, but we want to be proud of what we do. Even if it means losing an entire night in the office, throwing our sleep schedules completely out of whack, and eating a late-night convenience food “meal” with enough sodium to pay a Roman soldier for the week.
But now if you’ ll excuse me, I’ m going to sleep for roughly forever. Congrats Darrell ... finally.
