More than a year ago, I was dragged kicking and screaming into the Lake Country beat.

Having moved from Salmon Arm, with a population of 20,000 people, and Vernon, with 40,000 I wanted the bigger, better, offerings of Kelowna, hailed as one of the most competitive news markets in B.C.

I was disappointed to be working, again, within a town of 12,000 people, something at the time I considered to be a detriment to my career.

Looking back on the past year, I91ÂãÁÄÊÓƵ™ve written stories about the Okanagan91ÂãÁÄÊÓƵ™s oldest mayor, a public battle to preserve waterfront access, what it meant for a community to lose its only golf course, a councillor91ÂãÁÄÊÓƵ™s concern with the retention of the natural environment as the district continues to grow, cannabis legalization and how a city grapples with regulations, the history behind a familiar Lake Country boat, a feature on a worm farm which relies on 7 million wiggling workers and so much more.

Little towns like Lake Country have many stories left untold were it not for the journalists, often working late nights to cover a council meeting, or when a crazy situation happens like the wildfire in Okanagan Centre.

As my final week as a reporter with The Calendar draws to a close and as a new door opens at UBC Okanagan, I would like to thank the community for sharing its stories with me, and although I will be writing elsewhere, I hope that continues with the newspaper.

Thank you to my editor Kathy Michaels, with whom I discovered that gossip often leads to good stories and for upgrading my leads, all my co-workers at the Capital News, for keeping it real; to the former editor of the Salmon Arm Observer Tracy Hughes, for providing me with examples of showing not telling, to Glenn Mitchell, who originally hired me for a summer gig at the Vernon Morning Star, whose patience knows no bounds, and to everyone else I91ÂãÁÄÊÓƵ™ve worked with in the Okanagan. They91ÂãÁÄÊÓƵ™re an interesting bunch of people who work hard to tell unique stories.

It91ÂãÁÄÊÓƵ™s a wonderful place, Lake Country, full of interesting stories I began to find once I started looking.