Meet Keith Roulston, Community Futures Huron volunteer board member.
When Keith was growing up on a farm near Lucknow, it was still time when neighbours came together to undertake tasks that were too big for the individual to accomplish on his/her own. The lesson that community action can help the individual achieve his or her goals, has been a guiding principle in his life ever since.
Community action was involved in the creation of the Blyth Festival in 1975 (where he was a co-founder), with community fundraising helping finance the fledgling project which in the 45 years since, since become one of Canada’s most important professional theatres, producing more than 100 world premieres.
Bringing people together to create something new was part of the founding of The Citizen in Blyth and Brussels in 1985 when dozens of local residents bought shares in the region’s only community-owned newspaper. Still growing strong, The Citizen and its sister publications The Rural Voice and Stops Along the Way are the only publications owned within the county. The paper has won dozens of provincial and national awards over a 35-year period.
A graduate of the Ryerson University school of journalism, Keith spent the bulk of his pre-retirement career editing and publishing newspapers and magazines in Huron County. He has also written or co-written eight plays produced by the Blyth Festival.
He has been broadly involved in the community as a past president of the Huron County Historical Society, eight-year president of the Board of Directors of the Blyth Festival, and two-term member of the Board of Directors of the Ontario Community Newspaper Association, among other groups.
Becoming a director of Community Futures Huron fits right in with Keith’s career-long philosophy of community action to help people achieve their dreams. The funding available has helped dozens of creative people get their businesses off the ground, creating jobs, and enriching the county through adding to the variety of services available.
Read more about our Board of Directors here: https://cfhuron.ca/who-we-are/our-board-of-directors/
