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Five years ago this week, the Richmond News told its readers how a new Massey Bridge was going to miss out our city completely and span from Delta to Vancouver.
Of course, it was an April fool, but that didn’t stop copies of the paper getting passed around our office to test how much our non-newsroom colleagues were paying attention.
Without naming any names, we were astounded to discover how many people actually believed the new, 12-kilometre bridge – missing out Richmond due to complaints from the city and residents – was a real project.
Even pointing out the April 1 dateline at the top of the front page didn’t budge our colleagues from shaking their heads at $3.5 billion getting spent on the “bridge.”
Another notable April fool from the Richmond News’ archives was the revealing of a massive project to build a giant Japanese, coffin-style hotel on the Garden City Lands.
That one was so believable to some that a local Chinese-language publication breached copyright laws and ran our April fool, word-for-word, as a factual article.
It was only when one of their readers called them to complain that they realized the story they had “stolen” was a joke, even sending their irate reader to the Richmond News to protest!
