I wasn’t part of the bonspiel, although I did curl a lot back then, and I was there because our oldest daughter, a student reporter for Elk Point Reflections, one of two papers that along with the Journal, covered the activities in the town at that time, was there to cover the event. I noticed that there was no reporter there from the Journal, and as an avid member of the curling club, I definitely wanted the bonspiel to get the coverage it deserved. So, I borrowed her notes, wrote and submitted the story, and the rest is history.
The letter I received from Journal publisher L. H. Drouin, thanking me for the story and inviting me to cover any Elk Point news I wished to cover, is one of my greatest treasures, and is safely tucked away in a desk drawer, and reread many times over the ensuing years. The accompanying cheque was welcome, but the letter was an open invitation to an opportunity I’d dreamed of as a child, but had never been able to accomplish, my mother feeling a newspaper beat was “no job for a young lady.”
No longer being a young lady, I was about to find out that it was definitely a suitable job for me. I was soon covering 4-H, rodeo, sports, school events and local celebrations, eventually adding the chamber of commerce and town council to my news beat as well.
Before I knew it, I had a whole page that I could fill with Elk Point news, complete with a header that said, ‘Vicki Brooker, Elk Point Correspondent’, or as Mr. Drouin sometimes called me, “a foreign correspondent,” until in 1984, he said, “I’m going to buy you your own paper.” And he did. It came with its own editor, so I started as a reporter, moving up to editor that September and adding local correspondents of my own to the roster.
Things were very different then, from the multi-level, many-roomed Journal building with its front office walls upholstered in red shag carpet to a monstrous old press that still occasionally used lead type for job printing and two clattering newer presses in the back room that churned out tons of commercial printing each week.
When I started, I typed the news on a manual typewriter, one of a fleet of typesetters retyped it, a pair of proofreaders read it, and a layout crew laid out the pages. A darkroom technician developed the hand-rolled black-and-white films and printed the photos that would accompany the stories. The completed layouts were photographed and the negatives delivered to the printing plant where they were turned into printing plates and put on the press. When the printed papers came back to the Journal, I often joined the crew that stuffed them with flyers before another person stamped on address labels and bundled them for transport to the post offices and stores.
Fast-forward 40 years. I now write stories and photo captions on the computer, spell check them and make corrections, download digital pictures, pop the stories and photos into folders that go straight to head office, where someone I’ve never met fits them onto pages and puts completed pages into another folder that I can open to check them over and mark any corrections. Then I move them to yet another folder. I take a final look at the completed pages with the ads now in place an hour or so later, and give them my final OK. The printed papers come back addressed and complete with flyers, post office and newsstand ready.
It’s quick and it’s easy, but somehow I still miss the huge gang that shared that long-ago workload, so many of them I remember well and haven’t seen in years, although two or three do drop by the Journal every now and then.
And now, I’m off to cover yet another bonspiel.
