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Andy Prest: These are the most-clicked North Shore News stories of 2024

From real estate to explosives and back to real estate, here are the 10 stories that really caught the public's attention over the past 12 months

What topic of public concern is most important to you?

Is it climate? That’s got to be it, right? A crisis of floods and fires that seemingly grows worse by the month? Or is it politics? Keeping a close eye on the women and men who have the power to shape your world in ways both helpful or harmful?

Or health care? Housing? Business? It must be one of those, right? Are you sure? Because we have the numbers detailing exactly what garnered the most attention this year on our website. And friends, it wasn’t politics.

Consider this your last chance to recant before we dive in and see what people REALLY are interested in. OK, you asked for it. Here are the 10 most-read stories of 2024, counting down. Brace yourself for some hard truths – the clicks don’t lie.

10. West Vancouver Exhibit Offers Rare Glimpse Into Modest Home of Arthur Erickson: Alright, that’s an interesting start! It ticks a few of the standard boxes for highly read stories: history, celebrity (at least in a nerdy architectural sense) and, of course, real estate. Let’s see if any trends form here.

9. Maps Raise Prospect of Disaster Near North Vancouver Town Site: Well, well, well. This one is a comprehensive piece of journalism put together by no less than three of our finest reporters. It’s honestly quite heartening to see this piece on this list. Turns out that it’s not just stories about hero dogs, weird court cases and real estate that capture your attention.

8. Judge Rejects West Van Homeowner's Attempt to Halt Neighbour's Construction: Oh. Well. Here’s a weird court case, a neighbourly squabble over real estate. This one went to the B.C. Supreme Court, and somehow found its way into our top-10 most-read stories. I guess we do like peeking over the fence when there’s a fracas afoot.

7. West Vancouver Student Dubbed One of the World’s Brightest by Johns Hopkins Centre: This is neat, and not the typical fare of our most-clicked lists. People like superlatives, and the phrase “one of the world’s brightest” must have helped this story climb the list. Nice to see a smart youngster get some well-deserved kudos. Congrats fella.

6. Luxury Mansion in West Vancouver Hits the Market for $26.9M: Oh yeah, that’s the good stuff. Nothing like some good old real estate porn to really get the clicks rolling in. Throw the words “luxury” and “mansion” into a headline, top it off with some ungodly sum of money, and you’ve got yourself a most-read story.

5. Tesla Supercharger Queue Jams North Vancouver Parking Lot: This one also combines a lot of fan favourites. Folks love reading about Teslas for some reason. I think there’s a combination of people who think Elon and his rockets are the greatest thing ever, along with people who think the greatest thing ever would be to see Elon on a rocket fired into the sun. Also, parking gets people fired up. That’s just science.

4. Canada Opens Path to Permanent Residency For Families of PS752 Victims: Bit of a surprising one here, considering that the number of people directly affected by this policy might not even be in the triple digits. But this story got a ton of clicks, offering an informative look at the fallout from a tragic issue that has many connections to the North Shore.

3. Explosives Experts Continue Sweep for Bombs Near North Vancouver Trails: This entry in the list really demonstrates some of the randomness of the most-clicked calculations. This isn’t a bad story at all – folks are interested to know that there are old bombs next door to them on an old military site. But we’ve written at least a half dozen variations of this same story over the past few years, and this is the only one that garnered huge clicks. Why this one? I guess stories, like old bombs, sometimes just blow up.  

2. North Vancouver Park Ranger Catches Tree Cutters Red Handed in Lynn Canyon: This is an interesting one. We’ve learned over the years that North Shore people really love trees. This one also has the “caught red handed” tease, which certainly ramps up the intrigue. And then I love that it was a park ranger on the case. I picture, like, Chip and Dale, Rescue Rangers tracking down an axe-wielding perp, tripping him up with some ridiculous trap made out of fishing wire, a toilet plunger and chewing gum. Anybody else picture that too? No? Just me?

OK, moving on to….

1. Canada’s Most-Expensive Home For Sale is in West Vancouver: A ha ha ha ha. Yes. This absolutely nails it. And the numbers were huge! This might be, in fact, the most-clicked story I’ve ever seen in my years monitoring the old nsnews.com. No deep investigation, no political scandal. Just a really expensive house. If the Pulitzer Prize has a Showing You Fancy Pictures of a House category, we’re in the running.

But here’s the kicker – as I was putting this column together, my son happened to glance at the screen and absolutely lost his mind when he saw the headline. “Most-expensive house?! Here!? How much is it?! Show me the house! Does it have sports facilities?! Does it have a pool?! Show me!!”

OK, fine. Click the link, look at the house. You know you want to. In fact, you probably already have. I’ve seen the numbers – if you somehow haven’t clicked on that story yet, you’re the only one left. 

Andy Prest is the editor of the North Shore News. Find links to all the above stories at nsnews.com.