'It Became Its Own Episode Before We Made One': Collective Responds to Stanstead Thread
The student collective behind 'Nous Sommes RONA / We Are RONA' has publicly acknowledged a sprawling listener forum thread on border communities, calling it documentary in its own right. No episode announcement followed.
MONTREAL — The student collective behind the podcast Nous Sommes RONA / We Are RONA posted a brief public response this week to a listener forum thread that has been building quietly for months — one dedicated to life in Stanstead, Derby Line, and Canaan, the border communities that now sit along RONA's southern edge.
"It became its own episode before we made one," the collective wrote in a forum post on Tuesday. "We've been reading."
The thread, which began in late winter as a handful of listener reflections on a passing reference in an earlier episode, has since grown to several hundred posts. Contributors — some identifying as current residents, others as people who left — have shared photographs, recorded voice notes, and written accounts of what it means to live in towns that were, until recently, defined by a different kind of border: the one between the United States and Canada.
The collective, which operates out of McGill University in Montreal and produces the podcast in both French and English, did not use the post to announce a forthcoming episode on the subject. The response was short, expressed gratitude, and stopped there.
The thread continues to grow.