My wife and I were visiting good friends in Berlin four years ago. As always, our friends did many things to make us feel at home – including buying a copy of the Guardian Weekly. Their logic with this kindness was that we would have some English reading material while visiting with them. It was not unlike my first visit with them 40 years earlier, when they kindly tuned in the BBC in Berlin on their radio dial.
We read every square inch of that issue and the next week we were at the newsstand in Spandau looking for the next edition. Not only was it great to have an English language newspaper, but it was inspiring to enjoy the high-quality, diverse and meaningful journalism. Its global scope and inclusive nature were inspiring. Upon returning to our home in Nova Scotia, Canada, some weeks later, we took out a subscription and have enjoyed uninterrupted weekly issues ever since.
The recent coverage of our Canadian election was heart-warming in its positivity, something often lacking in today’s newspapers. But this is often tempered by the brutal honesty of the more dire issues that face us as a world community.
We are fortunate to have it delivered, beautifully written and organised, to our mailbox on our sleepy road, next to the ocean in rural Nova Scotia. It’s a capsule of the whole world coming into our quiet corner of it.
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