Editor’s note: Issue 4

I’m often asked why we called the magazine Perch. For one thing, it seemed fitting to give a nod to the mighty St. Lawrence River and our beloved yellow perch, the tasty species that launched a whole industry. But I also like that “perch” can mean a place where someone sits and observes what’s happening around them.

Here at Perch, we spend our days (and often nights) watching what unfolds in our community and those around us, and taking notes. I have an endless supply of story ideas scribbled in notebooks and on scraps of paper, ripped out of newspapers, stored in my bookmarks and screenshotted on my phone, or saved on FB. Some are even noisily bumping around my brain, ready to be ejected at a later date.

This issue that you are holding in your hands features countless people, places and products. What we are able to cover in these 36 pages doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of all the stories that we’d like to tell. But that’s OK—we plan on being around for a while and that will give us time to clear the backlog. After all, our stories are too important to ignore.