THUNDER BAY -- Most of our year in review features focus on what we, the editorial staff of tbnewswatch.com, have determined is the most important news of the year.
We make decisions based on how relevant the stories are to the community, its impact and popularity. There’s no science to this, we merely make judgement calls based on that criteria.
But reporters and editors will sometimes disagree with their colleagues’ choices, and even many of our readers won’t shy away from letting us know how wrong our year-end lists have been.
But the list below is different from those other year in reviews. The list below includes the five most read stories on tbnewswatch.com. There’s no judgement calls here, these are simply the facts.
5. Major Child porn bust
OPP charged more than 50 people from across Ontario in a massive online child exploitation investigation in September. Among those charged were two Thunder Bay men. The disturbing details of the case, and massive scope of the investigation, attracted a lot of attention.
4. Dramatic crash on a dashboard camera
Dashboard cameras are growing in popularity, and as a result we’ve had a couple highway encounters become major news in 2014. The third most read news story in 2014 was that of Ralph Ireland’s first-person view of a crash on a highway near Kenora.
3. Yet another dashboard camera crash
Ireland’s highway crash caught on dashboard camera wasn’t entirely unique.
Just before his encounter, another highway crash caught on video was getting major attention. In this video, no longer available via the story embed but still viewable on Youtube, viewers get a first-person look at a truck attempting to pass a snowplow on a snowy Northwestern Ontario highway.
The driver’s recorded terror has collected nearly 2.7 million views, and was featured on a segment of Comedy Central’s Tosh.0.
2. Nightmare vacation
A pair of Thunder Bay women say their dream vacation in the Dominican Republic turned into a nightmare after being attacked at the resort they were staying at.
The allegations led to an investigation by the RCMP, but no charges were ever made public.
Our top story of 2014 isn’t a single story, but a theme that cannot be ignored when you look back through the tbnewswatch.com database.
The Thunder Bay Police Service had 11 homicide cases on the books throughout 2014, a tragic statistic that will likely make this year forever infamous.
As we move into 2015, more details surrounding these tragic moments of 2014 will be revealed through courtroom proceedings. The toll these cases have had on the police budget, and addressing the root social problems that led to these incidents in the first place will also be topics of conversation in the New Year.
