Adam Prudhomme
Editor
Feeling a bit homesick and nostalgic for his hometown, Rick Couchman decided to use the power of social media to reconnect.
On May 23, 2014 he launched the Facebook page known as If you grew up in Napanee, Ontario do you remember…It turned out he wasn’t the only one looking to reminisce as the page has steadily grown to now close to 6,000 members with several posts a day.
“I’m a big fan of Napanee, lived there until I was 19,” recalled Couchman, who serves as an admin for the page. “Went to Loyalist College, did one year and decided I wanted to go out and do university and moved to Waterloo to do Wilfred-Laurier, met a girl there and ended up staying in Waterloo, but had a ton of friends still in Napanee. My parents lived there for years after so I was back to Napanee on a regular basis and eventually saw that there wasn’t really a group that brought everybody together so I decided to create ‘If you grew up in Napanee’.”
Ange Benn, a friend from his school days, also assists Couchman in moderating the group.
The page is a virtual trip down memory lane with members sharing old photos and memories of Napanee over the decades.
“We’ve got people posting from all across Canada and we’ve got a number of members from Great Britain that seem to follow along with us,” said Couchman. “I’d say that probably half the members are from Napanee and the rest are scattered around.”
Some of the posts delve deep into the history of the town.
“We’ve got several members that post a lot,” said Couchman. “There’s a guy named Cameron Eadie and he digs up, I don’t know where he gets them, the most interesting historical photos. They might be from the Napanee Beaver 75 years ago or he specializes in Gibbard’s ads from years ago. Then we’ll get a bunch of comments on it looking at the price or reminiscing about Gibbard’s way back in the day. Then you’ll get employees that worked there 40 years ago. It’s really kind of neat.”
Another active poster, Ken Wilde, focuses on some of the key figures from Napanee’s storied past.
“He posts almost every day a bio of somebody of people from Napanee area who fought in one of the wars, usually on their birthday or the day that they died,” Couchman said of Wilde. “He’ll give their birthday and the year they died and detail about the birth and I don’t know where he digs them up, from memorials or what it is, but almost everyday he posts someone who was influential from Napanee and ended up fighting for Canada. It’s the coolest stuff.”
Though social media can often promote more bad than good, Couchman says this group is overwhelmingly positive posts. Sometimes its old friends who grew up together reconnecting after losing touch for decades or old classmates sharing a fond memory. Other times its just members sharing their memories of a favourite ice cream shop or corner store-or perhaps an old watering hole.
The group has gotten so popular it’s even led to its own spin-off group called NDSS Memories.
Couchman says he’d never imagined it would take off the way it has or would enjoy the longevity that it has but it’s been a pleasant surprise. With no signs of slowing down, the group figures to be sharing memories and prompting smiles for years to come.