The newspaper is no longer, my reporting duties have shifted and evolved over the past half-decade, so why not have a little catch up session and give you guys a closer look at who I am and how I got here.
It was a cold and snowy night in March of 1985 when my mother went into labour with what was to be her first of three sons, and my arrival into this world was nothing short of extraordinary.
On a less satirical note, yes, I come from a family of boys. My mom is an absolute saint for keeping her sanity (or most of it) and for keeping the three of us and my dad in line.
While my mom was the nurturer, always a little overprotective of her first born but always wanting the best for me, it was my dad who had the biggest influence in the career path I've taken.
For much of my youth, my dad worked for The Toronto Star in the sales and distribution department. He might not have been a reporter himself, but the newspaper was a sacred thing in the Durnan household. My dad read the paper every day, and when I got to be old enough I started picking it up myself.
It started with the comics and puzzles pages at first, then moved to the sports section, then gradually into the news (after my dad was finished with that section of the paper, of course). The almost encyclopedic catalogue of information my old man possesses has always been a running joke in our household, where he's never shy to add a "did you know?" to a conversation, which is generally met with "why do you know that?"
I aspired to be that. I envied how he seemed to know at least a little bit about what seemed like everything, and a big part of that was because he read the newspaper daily, front to back, and kept himself up to date and informed.
The notion that I could actually be a reporter, writing the stories that informed people like my dad, never seemed like a reality. The image of reporters in my mind was that which you see in old movies and television shows; broad-shouldered men in suspenders and fedoras, banging away on an old typewriter with a lit cigarette hanging from the corner of their mouth and a phone ringing off the hook on their desk.
Once I was able to grasp the fact that I wasn't living in 1950, the path to becoming a real life news reporter started to become more clear. As corny and cliché as it may sound, all it took was the words of one high school teacher to put me on this path.
Grade 12 writer's craft class was a big turning point for me as I discovered that not only did I really enjoy writing, but I was actually kind of good at it. My teacher was a many-times published freelance writer and she pulled me aside after class late in the year and told me that I should really look into a career in writing.
Having a published writer tell me that I had the chops to actually get paid to write was an eye opener and off I went to Humber College's journalism program.
I'll skip past the three years I spent getting a crash course in all facets of the journalism industry, from the broadcast side of television and radio, to the print journalism side of the business, including magazine feature writing and newspaper reporting, because I think you know what direction I went.
My first real gig in the industry was in a little town in Northern Manitoba that actually has ties to Sudbury. I spent more than two years working at The Thompson Citizen in Thompson, Man., home to Vale nickel mines and nine-month long winters.
The job was a trial by fire in every sense and I'm forever in debt to my time north of the 55th parallel for giving me a crash course in what it was to be a community news reporter. There was no time to dip my toes in and my editor was a grizzled veteran of the news business who wasn't one for coddling his rookie reporter.
My first day on the job was the day I flew in; a morning flight out of Toronto to Winnipeg, followed by a flight on the smallest airplane I had ever been on, 800 km north to the remote city of 13,000 people. The publisher met me at the airport and drove me to the hotel they were putting me up in until I could find a place of my own. I dropped off my bags, changed clothes and headed into the office to meet my new coworkers.
The editorial team was made up of the editor, assistant editor/sports reporter and myself. The first conversation with the editor was little more than an introduction and a few pleasantries followed by, "there's a city council meeting tonight, you're ok to cover that right?"
And with that I was officially a news reporter. During my tour of duty in Thompson, I covered city council, chamber of commerce, crime — of which there was unfortunately a lot in the city that has long held a firm grip on a top five position among the nation's most violent cities — community events and some sports as well.
After two years of digging into every story I could in Northern Manitoba I was ready for something bigger and I landed a job in Airdrie, Alta., a city of roughly 70,000 people, just north of Calgary.
It turned out that Airdrie and I just weren’t a good fit for one another and I worried my experience there had soured me on the industry as a whole.
Thankfully, the itch to write and report never left and I arrived in Sudbury in 2015 to a newsroom that was a breath of fresh air. From the outset, I felt accepted and appreciated, and as though I'd been part of this team for years.
Though faces have changed, people have come and gone, much of the core group that I have worked with since day one is still here.
I've taken over the city hall beat from Darren MacDonald, who left some big shoes to fill and was a fantastic reporter for our team for a lot of years. I'm so appreciative that 10 years into my career I'm still learning as I go.
There's an old saying along the lines of "never stop learning, for when we stop learning, we stop growing", and I hope my growth as a reporter isn't anywhere close to finished.
