When a P.E.I. newspaper didn’t publish any obituaries last Thursday, some readers were left flipping through its pages, wondering if an error had been made.

Some called in, asking what the Journal Pioneer had done with the section.

Reporter Colin MacLean, 32, answered them on Twitter: “Just… nobody died,” he wrote in a tweet that went viral.

No mistake was made, he explained. In fact, people may have died in the province, which is home to about 145,000 people. But the Journal Pioneer didn’t receive any death notices from local funeral homes. They typically cover the western half of P.E.I., explained MacLean.

His matter-of-fact post had been retweeted nearly 4,000 times, liked nearly 25,000 times, and had more than 1.6 million impressions (the number of times a tweet appears in users’ feeds) at time of writing. He has gained about 500 new followers in the days since he posted the tweet. “Trailer Park Boys” actor Jonathan Torrens even retweeted him, adding: “Didn’t think I could love PEI more.”

“My phone was constantly buzzing. I couldn’t keep up,” MacLean told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview.

For a local newspaper, “death is big news,” as a story about the tweet on the Journal Pioneer website reads. For readers in small towns, it’s possible they may have a connection to the subject of an obituary on any given day.

“Obituaries -- especially in small towns -- are such an integral part of the community,” said MacLean, who has been with the Journal Pioneer since 2012. “It’s just something that locals do -- they check the obituaries on a daily basis. I’ve had so many people tweet back at me that their grandparents or parents do this every single day. It’s part of their routine.”

When that routine is disrupted, readers take notice. It’s not common for a newspaper to receive no death notices from funeral homes, but it has happened before, said MacLean. Some papers print notices such as the one posted by a Maine reporter in response to MacLean’s tweet: “There are no local obituaries in today’s paper.”

When asked if the Journal Pioneer might start running a similar notice on occasions like this, MacLean joked that that decision is above his paygrade.

There were no obituaries in today's paper. People are calling, wondering what happened to them. Just ... nobody died. — Colin Roger MacLean (@JournalPMacLean) August 9, 2018

Didn’t think I could love PEI more: https://t.co/0ft84rcJ9L — Jonathan Torrens (@TorrensJonathan) August 9, 2018