Former Daily Herald reporter, editor and publisher Barb Gustafson was offered a chance to discuss any topic for the Lifelong Learners program at the John M. Cuelenaere Public Library.
Her talk entitled “Herald legacies; capturing and creating history” on Tuesday evening discussed the history of the Prince Albert Daily Herald by focusing on some notable editors.
“I was invited to present as one of the lifelong learning presenters and was given any topic I wanted so I went to where my heart goes, back to the newspaper,” Gustafson said.
“Then I thought, well, the history of the Daily Herald in full, would take a whole book to really tell so I focused in on a few editors who had particular impact on the community or on the province. During their time as editor they used the power of the press, really, to make things happen.”
The history literally began at the beginning of the Herald’s existence.
“Well, going back to the very first editor of the Daily, before it was the Daily Herald, to the Herald, was H.C. Beatty, who was the editor at the time of the La Colle Falles development. He did some investigative journalism that the mayor, council, and the Board of Trade really didn’t want to see the results of, and so he got run out of town.”
Gustafson said La Colle Falls and the 50 years of debt that followed the project is always of interest to people in Prince Albert.
“The whole history of Prince Albert could have been very different if we had just listened to some of his questions and thought about it a little bit more,” Gustafson said.
Two editors, Jake Calder, who the Calder Centre in Saskatoon is named after, and Burton Lewis, helped to bring Alcoholics Anonymous to Saskatchewan.
“(They) really were the start of the AA movement in Saskatchewan,” she said. “It’s pretty clear from the history of AA that it really was these two editors. There’s a long connection of journalism and alcoholism, unfortunately, nd they had found a way to combat it. They got together and started it in Prince Albert and then from that throughout the province.”
Gustafson said she found the research work for the talk to be fascinating.
“I spent way more time on this than I thought I was going to,” she said. “I got digging into people’s personal histories as much as is available through internet sources or through books.”
She included a glowing quote from prominent Canadian Pierre Berton on Burton Lewis in the talk.
“He worked with Pierre Berton when Pierre Berton was a cub reporter in Vancouver before the Second World War and so Pierre Berton describes him in great- Loving detail in his autobiography,” she said.
The sources were interesting and she really considered the one hour presentation a passion project.
“There’s all kinds of sources like that. It really was a labour of love to go digging into this and learn so much more,” Gustafson said.
The presentation concluded with a section called “Et Cetera” which focused on some other parts of the history of the Daily Herald including the modern history as an employee owned newspaper.
There was a nice turnout of people in attendance despite a miserable Tuesday evening outside.
“December is a bad time,” she said.
Another topic was editors who came from a sports background and the impact they had on the city as a whole.
She said that the idea of a book on the history of the Herald could be something she could do now that she is retired.
“It was a lot of work, but it was work that’s very fun and engaging,” she said. “Who knows, if I was to write a book, I think a history of the Daily Herald might well be it.”
Gustafson also discussed her own time with the Herald first as reporter and then as editor and publisher during the presentation.
“It’s a chance to sort of relive my time at the newspaper as well and think back on that,” Gustafson said.
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
