The Brussels Post, 1976-02-04, Page 34t,,00.1,1,1ZZOWAL,O,A0,m,o'relva.a4.410100.4r
A SAD LOOKING CEILING The 'ceiling in the
hallway of the Glen Smith home was typical of the
damage done by a fire there last Monday morning,
Mrs. Smith said they think something backfired in
the furnace to start the blaze which went •through
some interior walls in the house. (Photo by Langlois)
Morning Star
plans euchre
Morning Star Rebekah Lodge
held their regular meeting Tues.
January 27, with a good atten-
dance. Reports were given on sick
and shut-ins.
It was reported that the Vice
Grand, Dorthea Ritchie had bro-
ken her arm.
Plans were completed for the
Dessert Euchre to be held in the
Lodge Rooms Monday February 9
at 1:30. Several members donated
prizes and money was also
donated by a member for prizes.
Several members had birthdays.,
After Lodge closed the social
committee arranged for all to play
euchre. Prizes were given. Lunch
was served.
LET. U5' MAKE 1~01(TR , OLD.: FilititlfT
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newest samples of
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WE FREE
Holy Ole Moly, I must be getting on!
Just walked in the door, picked., up the
mail, and there was ,an invitation to a
retirement party for Peter Hviclsten ,
publisher of the Port Perry weekly
newspaper. Say it isn't so, Pete!
Per (Pete) Hvidsten is a friend of more
than a quarter of a century, but it seems
only yesterday that he and I were the life of
the party, waltzing the girls off their feet ,
watching the dawn come up as we sat in
the bow of one of the old passenger
steamers sailing up the St Lawrence, while
everybody else, including the very young,
had gone to bed. '
Thisretirement gig is a trend that deeply
alarms me. All my old buddies are putting
themselves out to pasture. They' don't
seem to spare a thought for me. I have to
teach u ntil I am eleventy-seven to get a
pension.
About a year ago, three old and close
weekly newspaper friends phoned me from'
a convention in Toronto: Don McCuaig of
Renfrew, Gene Macdonald of Alexandria,
and Pete Hvidsten. It was, about midnight
and they weren't even flying yet. I sensed
something wrong. I thought they 'needed
Smiley there to get some yeast into the
dough. They sounded tired.
McCuaig is semi-retired, a-
- newspaper baron of the Otiawa Valley.
Gene must be either dead or' in tough
shape, as he wasn't at the summer national
weeklies' . convention. which he never
misses. And now Pete., `
Migawd, chaps, I'm just getting warmed
up in the teaching profession, I reckon I
have another 20 years to go, leering at the
latest skirt-length, telling and re-telling my
four jokes, trying to sort out the difference
between a dangling participle and a split
infinitive. How dare you "retire, " when,'
have to, go on working?
Well, maybe I know, at that. You've'
quit _because you've worked' like a ,clOg for
30-odd years in one of the toughtest
vocations in the world -- weekly editor. I
had 11 years of it, and if I'd continued, I'd
probably be pushing up pansies right now.
We were in it together when you worked
60-70 hours a week, when you had a big
mortgage to pay off, when staff was tough
to get and hard to keep, when the old press
was always breaking down and you
couldn't afford a new one, when y ou had to
sweat over a four-dollar ad, when you were
lucky to take home $60 or $80 a week.
But it had its rewards, right? There was
that sheer physical satisfaction of seeing
the first copy, run off and folded, smelling
of ink, practically hot in your hands, like a
fresh-baked loaf. There was another type
of reward knowing you had stuck to your
principles, and written a' strong and
unpopular editorial, letting the chips fall
where they might.
There was the deep pleasure of seeing,
aft er months of writing and urging, the
reluctant town fathers adopt a policy that
was right and good, instead 'of merely
expedient.
Sugar and Spice
by Bill Smiley
Getting old
Some people would prefer tc;• be
remembered by a plaque or a statue. A
good, old-time weekly editor would die
happy, if they named a new sewage system '
or old folks' home, for which . he had •
campaigned, after him.
There aren't many of the old breed left,
come to think of it. George Cadogan, Mac
McConnell, Art Carr, the. Derksens of
Saskatchewan.The type of editor who could
set a stick of type, fix a machine, run a
linotype in a pinch, carry the papers to the ,
post office, if necessary, pound out an
editorial.
There is a new breed abroad in the land. -
Many of them are graduates'of a school of
journalism. This type' wants every news
story to be a feature article. They all want
to be columnists, not reporterrs.
There's another type, among the young.
They refuse to believe that a weekly editor
should be poor but proud.They work on the
cost of a column-inch rather than records of
peoples' lives. They won't die broke. They
believe in holidays and fringe benefits and
all those things we never heard of and
couldn't afford.
Maybe it's all for the best., We were'
suckers. We literally believed that an
editor's first allegiance was the betterment
of the entire community, not himself.
Weekly newspapers, today, are better-
looking, fitter, richer. They are put
together with scissors and paste, printed at
a central location on a big, offset press
which doesn't break down, folded and
bundled with dispatch. The only thng that
hasn't improved is the postal„delivery.
But a great deal of the personal involve-_
meet is gone. The editor is not as -close to
his reader as he once was. When I was in'
the game, I was ~always', introduced to
strangers as: "This is 'pin. editor." Not the
editor of our paper, At °Ur editor.
Pete Hvidsten, green pastures. Keep
your nose out of it, and let the young guys
make a mess of the paper.
We had a good session at the oars of the
galley. And any time you want a game of
arthritic gOlf, you know where to come. As
a practically barely almost middle-aged -
school teacher, I think I can handle , a
"retired " editor any time. ,•
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THE BRUSSELS POST, FEBRUARY 4 1976 —3