Round here we're a small and friendly community. Everyone knows what everyone else is up to and if they need to get the word out fast, folks use the un classifieds in the Undercurrent. On any given Friday you can find a decent rundown on the REAL news on Bowen: who lost what, who found what, where the garage sales are, how to get your tickets for the choir show. A couple of years ago a roofer who had been notoriously unreliable even posted an apology in the unclassifieds, promising to return phone calls from now on.



in other words, the unclassifieds section of the paper is not just a place to sell and trade, but a finger on the pulse of our island.



So you can imagine the outrage as the Undercurrent has started taking classified from the mainland. The paper is owned by a chain and obviously the chain wants to put the same ads in all of it's papers. So now we have ads for lost dogs in Langley and car wash attendants in Slave Lake Alberta. It's absurd. Nothing lost on the mainland is going to find it's way to Bowen Island without help and a ferry ticket. But to make matters worse, our little colourful slice of local life is now buried in tiny print amid all of this uselessness.



Read the thread on the Bowen Online forum at the link above. Folks won't let our identity slip quietly into the inky black noise of offshore classifieds. Stay tuned.