Ah, spring! The season of birth and revelation and renovation. Most of all, spring—around these parts anyway—is the season of…...wait for it….. waiting.

Patience is what’s needed this time of year, the shoulder season between snowfalls and waterfalls. Patience is what’s needed when you see the sky reflected in mud-puddles for the first time in months, when you see lake water rise up and over slabs of rotting ice, when you hear the birds frisking in the bushes.

While you’re waiting, patiently, for the right time to begin your favourite warm-weather activities, you prepare. You dig out the hiking boots. Uncover the kayaks and canoes. Rattle out the shovels and rakes and hoes. You take warm-up walks in the hills and small, cold paddles at the lake’s edge and munch up the top layer of the garden so it can warm up a bit faster and be ready a day or two earlier. Nothing comes fast enough even though you know the longer the days, the shorter your wait.

It will all come in its own sweet time.

Now, a word about something else coming in its own sweet time: if you’ve been waiting for Northword’s next edition since January, your patience will be rewarded here, too. Not to worry, the Northword Magazine you know and love isn’t changing or going anywhere—quite the opposite, actually. As in birth, a contraction precedes the big push—which is why you didn’t see a Northword edition in February/March: we’ve been gathering our resources for the new edition and a new addition—the new edition being this issue, April/May (aka the Spring issue); technically, the new addition is not really an addition, but an expansion. Spring is also the renovation season, right?

Our expansion is our website: www.northword.ca. It’s been with us as long as we’ve been around (since 2004!) and it’s been a handy way to check out our writers’ contributions and a small selection of photos plus our regional Events Calendar which is used quite extensively. As our print readership has grown we’ve come to realize that Northword readers have so much to share that we just don’t have room for it all in print—by expanding our website we’re providing a community space where we can share what our neighbours across the north are seeing/hearing/thinking/feeling. As a result, as of this writing, our website’s been turned inside-out and upside-down to make room for more. After April 1, we’ll have a brand-new website, designed by our talented friends downstairs at Spark Design.

In addition to a gorgeous makeover (it looks pretty spiff!), all the good stuff from our printed pages will be there (articles, photos, columns) plus a Life section that invites reader contributions with lots of new categories. You’ll be able to comment on stories, post letters to the editor, add photos, follow new Northword blogs, regional books, musical events and performing arts, northern recipes, travel tips—and who knows what else will find its way in. Plus, you’ll be able to check out the CBC news feed for provincial/national/international news. Like spring shoots and leaves, new categories and sections will pop up unexpectedly. You never know what you’ll find at www.northword.ca.

Unfortunately, one thing you will have to wait a wee bit longer to see is our new online Events Calendar; it’s still under construction so is absent from this print edition but will be back as usual for June/July.

In the meantime, we’ll continue to patiently wait—for the soil to warm, the lakes to thaw, the mountain passes to open up. And for 
www.northword.ca.