AMHERST, N.S. — A longtime news reporter and editor and minor sports supporter is the newest recipient of the Amherst Rotary Club’s Distinguished Service Award.
Darrell Cole, lead editor of the Amherst News, was recognized by the club at its annual lobster dinner on Sept. 6 at Camp Tidnish, that is owned by the club and operated by Easter Seals Nova Scotia as a summer camp for physically and mentally challenged children and adults.
“Darrell is the Amherst News,” awards committee chairman Morris Haugg said while reading the citation. “Darrell has led the newspaper through tumultuous times in an industry that is in a state of constant change.”
Cole, a native of Kensington, P.E.I., did his training with the Amherst Daily News in early 1992 while studying journalism at Holland College. That was following his graduation in 1990 from the University of Prince Edward Island.
After starting his career in Grand Falls-Windsor, N.L., Cole was enticed back to Amherst in August of 1992 and moved from staff reporter, to news editor, managing editor, senior editor and lead editor of Amherst and the Sackville Tribune-Post.
Haugg said Cole’s membership in Rotary had “an unusual beginning” after being called into the office of then paper owner Earl Gouchie and told to go to the Hicks LeMoine law office to meet with Haugg about joining Rotary.
“Despite being ‘ordered’ to be a Rotarian, Darrell has been a dedicated Rotarian for 22 years,” Haugg said. “The late Dwight Jones asked him to be club secretary without telling him that led to being president just two years later. Darrell was a good club president. He enjoyed being a club leader so much that when his term as past-president was up, he stayed on as a member of the board of directors for many years.”
While he’s a newspaper man and a Rotarian, Haugg said he’s also a coach in minor hockey and baseball, working with numerous hockey teams over more than 30 years while coaching little league and bantam baseball, umpiring and serving on the executive in various positions of little league – including the position he presently holds, president.
He has also served as the play-by-play voice of the Amherst CIBC Ramblers when the games were broadcast on CFTA and CKDH radio and presently broadcasts games on Hockey TV.
Cole was presented the President’s Award by Amherst Little League in 2003 and received the YMCA Peacemakers Award in 2015 as well as the Atlantic Newspapers Silver Quill Award for 25 years of service to newspapers in the Atlantic region in 2017.
