Looking back at 150 years
When the time came to put together a piece on the 150th Anniversary of the WHT, the task was handed off to me.
I quickly found out that in order to present any sort of retrospective about the paper, I would need to look back through the bound volumes here at the office and also examine a few decades of microfilm stored at the Walkerton Library.
A daunting task to be sure, but I felt up to the task. You see, I had developed a taste for researching with microfilm while working on a project about the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike during my last semester at university.
I got a kick out of seeing the old headlines and reading out stories in my head with Cary Grant or some other classic Hollywood actor’s voice — as that’s how I imagine newspapermen spoke in those days.
In the early 20th century — as the paper gradually made the change from The Bruce Herald to The Bruce Herald and Times to its current moniker — your local paper did double duty covering local news, and social events, as well as some of the biggest stories of the day from around the world. It’s bizarre looking back and seeing a front page where the announcement of Britain joining World War One is in between a story about a Walkerton resident being considered for county License Inspector and a wedding announcement.
During this time photos were rare, columns were narrow, and font was tiny. Nowadays we fret over the idea of putting together a sports section without some kind of photo to break up the text, so it’s hard to imagine sending a front page of nothing but seven columns of out-and-out words to press. It’s even harder to imagine someone would want to read it.
As someone who came into this business with a wide range of technology at his disposal, including labour-saving devices such as computers, digital cameras, and scanners, I also find it tough to fathom the extra work that would have been required to do something as simple as put a photo on a page. I practically hyperventilate at the mere thought of the effort, patience, and skill required to turn a photo from a negative into a full-sized shot we could run on a page — let alone set the type on that page.
Digital cameras have caused darkrooms to go the way of the Dodo. In fact, the old darkroom in the newsroom for the University of Western Ontario’s student newspaper currently functions as a closet for junk furniture and collector of dirty dishes.
While technology continues to advance and old methods fall out of vogue, I guess I should be thankful that, so far at least, they still haven’t come up with a reliable replacement for a reporter.
