Oickle wins international newspaper award

Now, however, he has been recognized across North America as one of this year’s Golden Dozen of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors (ISWNE).

Oickle earned the best non-daily opinion writing award for a daring editorial entitled ‘Enough already’ he wrote about two years ago after the body of 12-year-old Karissa Boudreau was found. Oickle said residents were in shock and overwhelmed emotionally at the time. Her mother later pleaded guilty to the murder. “It was a tough time in this community. How could someone do something like this to a child? Oickle said.

As a result, he said numerous rumours - “some far-fetched - were spreading throughout the community because “people wanted answers and they wanted them today but you know how the law works. “I was afraid the rumours were getting in the way of the facts and the investigation would take more time. I said let the police do their work and we’ll get the answers we’re looking for.”

Kim Kierans from the University of King's College in Halifax judged the competition.

Kierans wrote, "While the author shares the community's horror, he urges readers 'to rein in the rumours, speculation and innuendoes' and in the name of justice let authorities do their job. It's a well-written, clear-headed and persuasive editorial in a time of great emotional turmoil."

Oickle said the speculation bothered him, in part, because he is a parent. The words flowed from there, he said. “It just hit me the wrong way so when I sat down to write it, it just came out. I got feedback but never thought it would be an award winner of that magnitude. When you write something like that you don’t write thinking you’re going to win an award. You just write because you feel strongly about an issue; it’s in your gut and you have to get it on paper. That’s how I felt.”

He said the reaction from the community was generally positive. Many residents, he said, told him the community needed to read those words. “It’s a great honour, something that I hoped I’d win but never thought I would. I’ve obviously won awards over the years but this is one of the more prestigious ones. It’s nice to be recognized by your peers as one of the best out there. Hopefully, it’s not the last.”

The editorial also won first place honours in this year’s Atlantic Community Newspapers Association competition.

He and his wife Nancy plan to remain in their childhood home of Liverpool with their two children, Kellen and Colby. Oickle added, “I’ll always have a special place in my heart for The Advance.”

Oickle worked as a journalist and then editor of The Advance from 1982 to 1994. Both Oickle and the newspapers he has worked for have won many regional, national and international awards for writing and photography over the years. Today, he is editor of the nationally award-winning newspapers The Bulletin (Bridgewater) and The Progress Enterprise (Lunenburg).

He has written 10 books, including the 1993 best seller, Life and Death After Billy: The Story of Jane Stafford (Nimbus Publishing, Halifax) and the 2008 Canada’s Haunted Coast (Lone Pine Publishing, Edmonton).

He is also co-author of Great Canadian Ghost Stories Vol. II, (Lone Pine Publishing, Edmonton). Most recently he was a contributor to the 2008 Nova Scotia Book of Musts (MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc.) He is presently researching and writing a book on Nova Scotia folklore that will be published in the spring of 2010.

Active in several community and professional organizations, Vernon is past president of the Atlantic Community Newspapers Association and chair of the Liverpool Regional High School Advisory Council.