Grey-Bruce Kids Winter 2021/22

When people do something difficult, they’ll quip that it
almost killed them.
Well, the first issue of Grey-Bruce Kids in late-2011 literally
almost killed me.
It was my 31st birthday, Oct. 25, and just three weeks before
our first press deadline. I’d been feeling under the weather
for a few days, but, as all Moms do, I powered through the
discomfort to chase my young daughters and work on my new
business venture – Grey-Bruce Kids magazine.
Yet I knew something wasn’t right and Googled my symptoms
– I was pretty sure my appendix had burst, and most likely a
few days prior, which is very dangerous as you surely know.
None of my husband, my sister or the ER doctor believed me
because most people rush to the hospital when their appendix is
first inflamed, thankfully not being able to stand the pain long
enough to allow the useless organ to burst. Unfortunately, my
high pain tolerance allowed me to live my regular life for days
after, even as my bloodstream was poisoned from within.
By the time the doctor believed me and cut me open, I was septic.
What had been my appendix was gangrenous. They had to do two
surgeries just to wash the infection off my other organs.
I was in bad shape, delirious on medication, in incredible pain,
unconscious for hours and the better part of days at a time, and
there was a window where we didn’t know if I’d ever again hold
my daughters, tell my husband a joke only I find funny, or put
the first issue of Grey-Bruce Kids into your hands.
Thankfully, I turned the corner, making incremental
improvements and leaving the hospital 17 days later, weak and
so tired. Still – somehow – we hit our first deadline that very
week and here we are, 10 years later, celebrating the 41st issue of
our little local magazine that almost never was.
A SERVICE DIRECTORY?
My husband Dwight and I were both born and raised in Ripley,
and we graduated from Conestoga College in Kitchener in
2002; me with a diploma in social services, he in journalism.
We immediately moved to Alberta to start our careers, and, after
getting married in 2004, we quit our jobs and sold our house
in Big Sky Country to go backpacking across New Zealand and
Australia for 10 months. Eventually we landed in Port Hope,
Ont., where we welcomed our daughter Layne in 2007.
I was newly pregnant with our second daughter when we moved
back to Ripley in 2010, so I had no job from which to take
maternity leave after her birth just a few days before Christmas.
As I said in my first Publisher’s Note, “I immediately realized,
despite the fact there are thousands of families in Grey and
Bruce which face the same challenges mine does, there was
no publication dedicated solely to parents and caregivers.”
Families need easy access to services, baby groups, breastfeeding
information, health care, and much more, so I decided I’d be the
one to bring that information to local parents and caregivers.
After brainstorming different options, we landed on a free-forpick-up,
widely distributed magazine that we called Grey-Bruce
Left: The Irwin family (clockwise, Dwight, Amy, Layne and
Jace) in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam, in December 2019. Above:
The family photo that marked the 1st anniversary of Grey-
Bruce Kids, in 2012.
Kids. With my background in social services and a natural
business acumen, and my husband’s newspaper writing and
editing experience, we convinced ourselves we could do this.
Somehow, through my hospitalization, a few weeks of very
little sleep for Dwight, and a lot of help from our parents,
our first issue made it to press on time, and on Dec. 1, 2011,
we distributed 10,000 copies across Grey/Bruce. We were
astonished by the feedback, with many commenting on the
professional look of the product and the interesting articles,
made better by being written by local people for local people.
NO TOPIC TOO BIG
With our backgrounds in social services and journalism, our
intention was never to have Grey-Bruce Kids be a “fluffy”
magazine. There would be no topic too big for our little
publication and, right from Issue 1, we met the challenge head
greybrucekids.com • 5