by Todd Daigneault

Created on: January 24, 2010

The paperboys are almost a thing of the past, with declining readership in print, different means of delivery and billing that no longer requires the young lad (or lass) to deliver them everyday.  This once iconic profession for young people is rapidly becoming very archaic in an era of nanosecond communications, and the proliferation of instant news channels that does not offer 'old' news.  With news channels everywhere that people can download onto many 21st century electronic conveyances, like the cell-phone, handling a print newspaper is like listening to the radio via an old tube radio (something that belongs in a museum).  I am almost in my mid-40s and remember my brother delivering newspapers in the mid to late 1970s.

For many in my generation, images of kids riding their bicycles through elm-flanked streets and tossing the paper at the doorstep still resonates deeply through us.  We may be deeply immersed in countless new and advanced electronic conveyances, but the image of the paperboy or girl doing their route can only bring us many good and touching memories of that era.  I remember my brother taking his collection book and giving his clients a little stub as a receipt.  Where have all the paperboys gone?  They became middle-aged individuals, immersed in huge technological advances, almost seemingly like a time traveller leaping from 1975 to 2010.  We heard of an incredible future coming, but it was still too many years away to really impact us.  We either chucked or newspapers, or knew of others who did.  The cassette walkman was just coming out.

The irony of things are that I still have an ancient walkman, not out of being able to access the more advanced electronic devices, but out of a fondness for a more innocent time when there were no huge pandemics sweeping the world, no terrorism, climate change, disappearances of freedoms, huge wars and disasters.  The world changed, as it always does.  But that walkman symbolized to me a kinder and gentler time when the paperboy or girl earned a few extra dollars a month...and the world was sweeter and kinder.  My generation, like ever other that came before, lost its innocence and became adults in a different and changed world.  We accepted it through the cycle of life, death and renewal.  But we will always smile about an era when the paperboy or girl symbolized aspects of North American life and culture...bygone eras, yes.  But still part of our shared memory and mindset.

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