Dave Obi: Sorry for a very bad week.

I really, really hope print subscribers read this over breakfast on Sunday morning.

It’s been a tough week. We’ve had our fair share of production issues over the past few days that have resulted in, at best, delayed shipments and, at worst, no deliveries.

We sincerely apologize for these problems. We understand that patience is running out. Rest assured that we are doing everything possible to fix errors in the system.

We appreciate your support and we don’t like it when we fail.

The problems started with a hurricane on Tuesday evening. There weren’t many power outages in the main municipalities, but things were different away from Victoria, Oak Bay, Esquimalt and southern Saanich.

At one point, BC Hydro’s outage map showed power was out to nearly every address from Chemainus to Qualicum Beach. Unfortunately this included Ladysmith where Colonist of the Times is printed.

The power to the pressing plant went out at approximately 7:15 p.m. We knew that when the power came back, it would take at least three hours to get the press running. We waited longer than we should have and canceled the Wednesday print edition at 10:30pm.

In the end, this decision did not matter as power was only restored at almost 8:00 pm on Wednesday. We planned a three-section issue for Thursday, but the newspaper is printed in two sections, and we did not have time to print the third section.

This meant we had to cut some features—and no matter which ones we cut, we’d still have unhappy readers. Among other things, we decided to scrap the puzzle page because we could compensate by running additional puzzle pages later.

For the record, there are many hobbyists who hate missing out on their puzzles. I think I’ve heard most of you think.

We thought we’d be back on track with Friday’s episode, but we were wrong. Another breakdown, this time in communication, resulted in another late publication. Saturday’s episode was also a little late, which didn’t help.

We’ve had power outages before, but I’ve never seen the effects last this long.

Several people who contacted me told me that our big mistake was moving the printing plant to the Ladysmith plant. The paper would not be late, they said, if we still had a press in our old premises in Douglas Street.

Well, to be honest, it wouldn’t be too late because he wouldn’t exist. The money we saved by outsourcing printing meant we were able to keep going when our advertising revenue collapsed at the start of the pandemic in March 2020.

Once again we apologize to our readers. You deserve better service than you receive.

We also need to apologize to our drivers and carriers who are willing to go into the wee hours of the morning, day after day. This week they waited for several hours and then faced the wrath of subscribers during delivery.

(Please don’t criticize the carriers. It’s not their fault. Let them complete their routes as quickly as possible.)

Thanks again for your support. Thanks again for staying with us. And I sincerely hope that this newspaper arrived on time.

Dave Obey is editor and publisher of the Times Colonist.