Jim Gurnett is a familiar face in the Boyle Street and McCauley area. A former resident of McCauley, his office at the Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers, where he was the Executive Director, was located in Boyle Street for a long time. Although he no longer lives in the area, Jim is a regular contributor to the paper as a writer and photographer. Most recently, Jim has taken on a couple of routes as a block carrier, even though it means commuting from his home in Sherwood Park to deliver the paper.

As Jim explains, community newspapers are part of his background, and a strong reason why he is so committed to Boyle McCauley News. “One of my earliest careers was founding, editing, and publishing a community newspaper. A good community publication has great capacity to support people understanding and appreciating each other and being better able to work on issues that affect all their lives. Newspapers are the place where community and communications come together and we grow in understanding and commitment to all we have in common,” he says.

“I have seen Boyle McCauley News serve people in its area very well and have always been glad to do whatever I could to help out here and there—at various times being on the editorial advisory board when I lived in McCauley, and since then writing and delivering. Besides, delivering a route is good exercise and reminds me of my life 50 years ago delivering the Edmonton Journal – and my current route lets me walk near Trinity Manor, the housing for refugees I helped develop when at Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers as the first example in Canada of housing with integrated support services for such people.”

In fact, Jim is quite passionate about issues concerning housing and poverty, and many of his articles for the paper reflect this worldview. “I want to see a world where there is fairness and caring in all our dealings with each other. Housing is one of the most significant ways in which people can maintain some control in their own lives to have health and security. We need to work for this to be treated as a basic human right for which all of us have responsibility and which our governments need to treat as a duty.”

Jim is involved in other organizations in the inner city. He is on the board of Alberta Street News and the vestry of St. Faith’s Anglican parish in Alberta Avenue. He is also on the organizing committee of the annual outdoor Way of the Cross. In terms of his career, he is currently Chief of Staff for the NDP Opposition at the Alberta Legislature.

In what is left of his spare time, Jim attends many rallies and other events that support causes of social justice. However, family does come first. “Because my work life keeps me too busy these days, I have reduced other commitments to have time to enjoy my eight grandchildren whenever possible,” he says.

“ I do hold on to some time to listen to Bob Dylan every day, however – you can never get enough of him.”