FARM24 - 'The Rural Voice' has been telling the stories of rural life for generations
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
While The Citizen’s annual “Salute to Agriculture” may come but once a year, its sister publication, The Rural Voice, has been doing nothing but saluting agriculture, once a month, for almost 50 years. The magazine’s founder, Keith Roulston, may have retired from his position as editor of the farm-focused periodical over a decade ago, but he can still be convinced to stop by the offices of North Huron Publishing to share a little bit of history about how Huron County’s record of all things rural came to be.
As with so many successful creative endeavours, The Rural Voice began when Roulston realized he could do better than the farming periodicals that were already on the newsstand. “In those days, Western Ontario Farmer Today was a big farm paper, and they were just making a small fortune, and I didn’t think they were doing the job they should be. They were mostly just running press releases, and so on and so forth. We needed a different farm paper, one that was doing more serious work about farmers, so I started The Rural Voice.” It was a natural move for a young rural journalist with a passion for agriculture. “I grew up on a farm - my life was about farming, and it’s the basis of our community here,” he said.
When he started The Rural Voice, Roulston was already well-versed in the newspaper game, so the early issues were printed in the standard newspaper style of the day. “We were doing much shorter articles at first,” he explained. At that time, the Huron County Federation of Agriculture was sending out its own newsletter via mail. “They were getting funding from the Ontario Federation of Agriculture. So we said we’ll publish your newsletter, and put it in The Rural Voice. In the beginning, it was a challenge - there hadn’t been a farm newsletter in our area before. Most of the newspapers just covered whatever stories came to them.” That first newsletter was soon joined by the Perth County Federation of Agriculture’s newsletter. Then Bruce County’s, and finally Grey’s. As those basic newsletter articles gradually began to evolve into longer stories of agricultural interest, the publication’s format switched to magazine style.
In 1975, Roulston discovered a new passion - founding a rural theatre. Over time, he divested himself of much of his publishing empire, including The Rural Voice, which changed hands several times before it came back to Blyth for good in 1991. And it didn’t come alone. “When we bought it back again, it came with all these contributors - freelancers that it collected along the way.”
Those new contributors and Roulston’s renewed stewardship brought The Rural Voice into a new era of rural journalism. “We just wanted healthy rural communities, and to serve those communities by telling the stories that are available to us,” he said. “As we went along, we found so many interesting people [whose stories we needed to tell]. I think that because of the coverage that The Rural Voice did over the years in telling stories about people doing things like conservation tillage, and so on - I think it helped change the way people farmed. Writing about those leaders and those innovators made it possible for more people to know about them.”
In his opinion, there’s only a few rules for what makes a good Rural Voice story. “It has to be interesting, and be something that people can apply to their own lives. They can say ‘oh, gee, it’s interesting what that person is doing. Could we do some of that on our farm?’”
Roulston eventually turned stewardship of The Rural Voice over to its current editor, Lisa Boonstoppel-Pot, who also doesn’t mind stopping by to talk about the magazine - after all, both offices are on the same floor of North Huron Publishing. As a professional journalist and avid beekeeper, it’s her job to keep the energy around Roulston’s rural magazine buzzing. Whether she’s writing about worms or featuring a local farmer, Boonstoppel-Pot clearly loves what she does. “I was a co-op student here when I was 16 years old,” she explained. “So I have been involved with this company for a very long time. Keith was always so generous in letting me write stories for both the paper and the magazine, since I was a farm girl. And that’s how I got started.”
Roulston may have handed over the mantle of the magazine, but he hasn’t quite finished with the world of rural publishing, much to the delight of his one time co-op student. “He’s still a very treasured and valuable columnist. When he retired, I was really worried that he was going to stop writing his column,” admitted Boonstoppel-Pot. “But he was keen to go, and every month, he absolutely delivers. It’s unbelievable.”
When compared to its inaugural issue, The Rural Voice has clearly changed since she first started. “The magazine is a lot more colourful now,” she pointed out. “Visually, that’s definitely the biggest difference. All the photography used to be in black and white. And we were developing our own photos back then - technology has made everything more colourful. And easier. There’s also been some design changes, so it looks a little different. Also, none of our original freelancers are still here, although we do still have a few left from Keith’s era.”
From a content perspective, The Rural Voice has never stopped evolving right along with the agricultural community. “I think, with the advent of social media, the focus has changed a little bit. I don’t think it’s a magazine that you go to for current news... I think we are in changing times. We see it all over the place - in agriculture, and in print media specifically, as everyone turns to social media for their information and their news. But I think it’s really important to realize that journalists like you and me are the ones who go to the farms, we sit down at the kitchen tables, we talk to the real people, and we get the real story. This is not one paragraph that tells you nothing - you get a whole picture of what’s really happening. Don’t give up on print media - it has something to say!”
One thing that hasn’t changed is the sheer volume of stories that are worth telling. “Huron County is a noted agricultural county. We are top of the heap in terms of our production and farm numbers, along with the other counties we cover. Our identity is rural and agricultural. Our roots are just steeped in it, and we need to honour and celebrate that, and tell those stories, and teach and encourage one another with the stories we record in The Rural Voice.”
Boonstoppel-Pot also thinks that The Rural Voice is a worthwhile read for all people, not just those in the agricultural sector. “Even for people that are not actively farming, it’s about understanding how farming has changed. The Rural Voice has been recording those changes now for 50 years, and as people get more and more removed from the actual farm, it plays a huge role in showing and telling them what farming is like nowadays.” She would love to see the magazine find a wider readership in more urban areas.
Boonstoppel-Pot’s favourite type of Rural Voice stories are the ones that shine a light on local lives. “In every issue, I like to have at least one story, or more than one story, that’s simply about a farmer. A story about a farmer that’s doing something new, who wants to share what they’re doing, to talk about the why, what, where in a way that celebrates agriculture, and encourages other people to perhaps investigate what they’re doing on their farms, or perhaps even a new farmer might say ‘hey, I’d like to try that too!’ I think people’s stories are the best stories. You can learn so much as people share their accomplishments, and their difficulties, and their struggles.”