Village Squire, 1975-01, Page 53
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In the fall, with school approaching, he was
offered a job as a full-time apprentice. He was
nearly 14, the age at which a youngster could
legally leave school at the time, and so his
mother agreed. So he was launched into the
newspaper world with a grade eight
education.
It was the machines, he recalls now, that
got him interested in newspapers, but once
inside the newspaper world, he began to
realize that all the machines and all the
printers were really jufthere to service the
men who did the writing, the journalists. So,
while he continued to work with the
machinery, learn the mechanics of the
newspaper business arid fullfill his mechani-
cal bent, he also began to become interested
in the literary side of the business.
During his late teens he quit the Star at
Sudbury and headed to Toronto and linotype
school. He helped pay the bills by doing the
rounds of the Toronto newspapers and
getting work replacing typesetters who were
ill. Through a friend in the Toronto Star, he
also got a chance to pick up some skills in the
editorial side.
After he finished school he got a job at the
North Bay Nugget and while there ran into
another strange character around town, a fat
man by the name of Roy Thompson who was
to go on to some newspaper fame of his own.
During the 30's he was back in Sudbury
working for the Northern Press but was
thrown out of work when the newspaper went
bankrupt.
He kept busy with another of his many
talents, music, for the next while, playing
saxophone in a band called the Midnight
Ramblers, but his mother was not at all
enamoured of this way of making a living and
so when a friend told him of a job as a printer
in a little town called Palmerston, it• was
pressure from mother that helped make up
his mind to take the job.
He arrived in Palmerston on April 1, 1934,
not really an auspicious date to start a new
job. He might not have stayed either, if not
for his interest in music. He wasn't enthralled
by smalltown life and was ready to quit when
he became involved in starting up a band
with' a group of local men. He stayed and so
was on hand when the Observer went broke
soon after. It was taken over by a man named
Ross Harkness and Art ran the paper for him
until Sept. 1938 when once again it went
broke. He was encouraged by his mother in
law and by several local businessmen who
backed him for $100 each, to take over the
paper, and he did. And going on forty years
later, he's still the proud owner of what he
calls "the best little paper in Palmerston."
You can miss seeing the Observer office
when you drive through Palmerston. It isn't
in the main business section but to the south,
located what used to be a house but now
serves as a crowded shop with living quarters
upstairs.
Inside, you wonder how so many machines
and so many people can all function
effectively in the • space allowed. But the
inventive genious of Art Carr has seen to it
they can. 'Every bit of space is utilized and
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VILLAGE SQUIRE/JANUARY 1975, 3