Everybody should have a hobby. Model airplanes. Snowmobiling. Fishing. Racing cars. Needlepoint and quilts. Moosehair tuftings. Music or singing.
And so it goes, on and on and on. Even volunteering can be thought of as a hobby.
Some hobbies, like painting oils or watercolours, or even just sketching, are very common. Others, not so common.
Our local newspaper editor, Chris Clegg, has one of the less common hobbies. He collects statistics. So much is he into statistics, his e-mail address is even statsmanchris.
His stats all revolve around the North Peace Hockey League. He has them all. And, like any true hobbyist, he loves to rattle off numbers and dates and funny coincidences to anybody willing to listen.
We were thinking of this as the end comes to another season in the NPHL. Chris doesn’t get the recognition, as a volunteer for keeping all these stats, he deserves. And he doesn’t really care. He is a true hobbyist, and loves doing it. Thanks, statsman!

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This is the last full weekend before ice fishing season closes on March 31.
Weather forecasts for now until then show mostly sunshine and above zero daytime weather. Oh, there will be a few days here and there with clouds and snow, but all in all, a great wrap-up for this year’s season.

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The oldtimers don’t want to get their news online. Youngsters like their news online. Then there are the people of all ages who get their news from their phones.
So it seems to not be automatic that if you are a young person [let’s say, under 30] you will be getting your news on your phone, even if you are a Facebook fanatic.
Some people check their Facebook 150 times per day or more! Some people don’t even go to Facebook. Oh well!
So what got us going on this was talk from Swan Hills. There, the weekly newspaper says most of the town has told them not to put their local newspaper, the Grizzly Gazette, 100 per cent online. It’s similar in the High Prairie region. Most oldtimers say they like the print edition.
Last week, The Page talked to our newspaper association about some advertising programs they are working on. Along the way, we wanted to know how the southpeacenews.com website compared to other weekly newspapers in Alberta. They told us numbers are confidential. We don’t know why and the best we got was, “It’s just policy.”
But in spite of that, we were told the SPN online readership traffic is the same or better as many much bigger markets in Alberta.
For anybody interested, the News online ticks off about 75,000 views per month, with over 1,000 unique visitors per day. Which means the average user comes to looksee about 2 1/2 timer per day. Cool!
We are working hard to make those numbers grow. For one thing, if you read a story online, please note you can post a comment right now under the news story. Once you are an approved poster [which doesn’t even take a day usually] you can post more comment on other stories immediately. If you want to make a short comment, this is the place to do it.
Of course, the old fashioned letters to the editor are always welcome too.

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The only bad thing about spring is you can see all the trash in town discarded from the past winter!