The Boundary Sentinel is back
We are back. We’ve moved from a dot com to a dot ca, but otherwise, it’s business as usual.
The site has returned at boundarysentinel.ca with new coverage of the Boundary, West Kootenay and Okanagan, alongside an ongoing effort to restore the publication’s archive.
The Sentinel was founded in 2009. I took over the publication in 2013 and continued its work as a source of local news for Grand Forks and communities across the Boundary.
Bringing the site back has required more than rebuilding a homepage. Thousands of archived articles, photographs, publication dates and bylines are being recovered and moved into the new site. That work is continuing, and some older pages may still be missing images or other information while the archive is restored.
Those stories are part of the region’s public record. They document elections, community projects, emergencies, businesses, court cases, local organizations and the people who shaped the Boundary over more than a decade. Preserving them is an important part of the Sentinel’s return.
New reporting has also resumed.
The Boundary will remain at the centre of the publication, including Grand Forks, Christina Lake, Greenwood, Midway, Rock Creek and surrounding communities. The Sentinel will also regularly cover the West Kootenay and Okanagan. Intermittently we will cover stories outside our home region that we feel will interest Boundary readers.
Our local regions are closely connected. Boundary residents travel for health care, work, shopping and recreation. Wildfires, highway closures, weather systems and government decisions rarely stop at municipal or regional district boundaries. What happens in Trail, Castlegar, Nelson, Osoyoos, Oliver, Kelowna or Penticton can have a direct effect on people living in the Boundary.
Readers can expect coverage of local government, health care, emergency services, schools, businesses, community organizations, arts, heritage, roads, wildfires and other regional issues.
The Sentinel will also make room for human-interest stories.
Some of the most widely relevant stories begin with one person in one community. A nurse working through a health-care crisis, a family rebuilding after a wildfire, a volunteer who has spent decades supporting an organization or a business owner trying to keep a rural service alive can help readers understand much larger issues. We’d love your ideas!
A story rooted in Grand Forks can still matter far beyond the Boundary when it says something about rural health care, work, family, loss, recovery or community life.
The publication will grow in stages. For now, the focus is on publishing useful and accurate news consistently while continuing to restore the archive. As readership and revenue grow, the goal is to work with diligent freelancers in the Boundary, West Kootenay and Okanagan and to increase the amount of original reporting and feature writing on the site.
Readers can help shape that coverage.
The Sentinel welcomes news tips, event notices, photographs, corrections and suggestions for people whose stories deserve to be told. Readers are also encouraged to report missing information or problems they find in restored archive articles.
The Boundary Sentinel has returned to record what is happening, ask useful questions and tell the stories of the people who live here.
The Boundary remains at the heart of the publication, with coverage extending across the West Kootenay, Okanagan and beyond.
Check below for Boundary Sentinel milestones.
We are back. We’ve moved from a dot com to a dot ca, but otherwise, it’s business as usual.
The site has returned at boundarysentinel.ca with new coverage of the Boundary, West Kootenay and Okanagan, alongside an ongoing effort to restore the publication’s archive.