171_Richards-Tony_Driftwood.mp3

otter.ai

11.03.2023

no

Unknown Speaker 0:16
I should correct one thing there for your desk. Bob was vice principal of high school and I was a student there and I actually quit school during Duncan's mother's typing class we're planning on for a Hepburn but our business Hepburn, but I didn't graduate from high school. I'm going to turn things over to Duncan to start off with because we're going to cover things for us chronologically. And Duncan is going to talk more about woody Fisher's because I'm not familiar with that

Unknown Speaker 1:00
Bobby Fischer, we're Americans I believe what he was from Wyoming or someplace among states like that. I know. Bobby was from Texas because she had this great Texas accent. A delightful when he was a professional journalist, and I guess always wanted to start a paper but how he wound up here but I do know prior to leaving Ganges, they were caretaking on top of small Antonopoulos. Pointless terminal.

Unknown Speaker 1:28
Maybe the communication the roadmap winter. Not very thrilled living with some of it started to driftwood in March of 1960. And I believe Tony and his family are now running in year number 43. And this week, condition number 20.

Unknown Speaker 1:51
So it's basically over 20, over 42 years old. The time I was in high school, and again, our careers sort of crossed, Tony, because I've been writing for the city review as many people as well as a Danish, a small, weekly news column on the high school. And I guess the result of that when he contacted me that I wanted a part time job in his paper. So I did and the job was Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday after school and all day Saturday. And Wednesday was publication days. So he ran into problems and to see late. This was all from 50 cents an hour, believe it or not was pretty much the prevailing rate high school. Sometime later, maybe you're layering huge raises 75 cents. Believe it or not. I actually made me money to help the university. Actually, I was acting editor for one issue, including the technical process. I believe. Tony has brought some examples here. Flashman What do we got here? Number one, number one, I don't think I worked on this one. But it was maybe a graph on the stettner duplicator and the process involved a sheet of paper that was impregnated with wax tight typed on it or wrote on it. And then the ink was hoarse from the scratches in the wax. It's pretty hard to handle using very careful and any errors in that for me using red really bright meal stencil on machine had electric motor and automatic he was still alive and can reasonable quality. As you can see that it was halfway 14 paper usually six, four to six sheets and distinctive yellow color. It's not just old age and the back pages we're using the points. We did around 1200 copies a week. And these were put the six pages or put in a rack and call aid and hand stable when freeware and available mailbox the theory being that it's not uncommon even today that if you can guarantee your advertisers a certain level of exposure, you can actually make your money on the advertising because you know that all in those days 1200 mailboxes on Saltspring My job was tracing drawings lettering and all the advertisements on using sort of stencils and things like a ballpoint pen and help them to print usually did all the staples. About the same time when he started the first item bookstore and it was the first time in the bookstore took your comments of life in those days. It was a fun weekend live and refunded people in the interesting people and great place to work. We produce an extra one. WAC Bennett, who is Bill Bennett's father was also premiered in DC at a summer place on assaulting sunset drive. I'm not sure if it's Solon founded or not. It was a Cabinet meeting on July 14 1960, at the harbor house, which is a hard road to before the one was in and out. And I remember at site which produce a one page extra to cover this, but of course, we didn't actually have to do nothing useful. But no great announcements like bridges from zero point. Or office started out in a little building it I think it was actually a little house. The bottom of Ganges hill just over Radio Shack is now crossing the forest. And I think Fisher's actually lived there for a while and hope nobody came to the store. Using my job to open up on Saturday mornings and things have changed and haven't changed, but you'd be hitchhiked to work with the driver. People just don't actually come around. But if I forgot the office key to open up on Saturday morning, it was really easy just waiting to mods or walk over 10 cents like buy another skeleton key. Big get in the moment

Unknown Speaker 6:35
was in the early days of electric typewriters training site and the first one we got. And it was an IBM called the golf balls. Around ball with this big in the middle of it all the characters on a climber who carried still some back and forth electric power in the winds. And can remember certainly excitement for the odd carelessly placed

Unknown Speaker 7:05
people was very different in style and when talking to told me and actually went in their archives and read a few of the copies. I think it reflects more the lifestyle in the United States in the current editorship than both. For example, I remember blobbies, John was always through all the ways. They were described in great detail. descriptions of the dress and the flowers, attended the teaser receptions. And there was a column headed bats, fables and foibles, which was kind of fun. This is what he's pride and joy, a collection of one or two line items could be anything from gossip to local events to what we call the Danish government training. And I'm very interested to see the new column has just come in and grandson roses in present paper has quite a similar flavor, but some of the islands some of the items it used to be in fact in this historical society so the next item is of some interest. The trip journal was a feature inserted when we needed extra filler material. The preface was and I quote, favorite, continuing the Journal of Anthony trip, said to have been found with some of the letters and rubbish removed from a derelict farm on Maxwell Saltspring Island, my time is very accessible. And I always thought it was bogus. But I really did find that. I don't think it was somebody that I thought did. But it caused some controversy because it's just back to the fiction and so on. But it was very well written. I left to go to university in 61 I guess after the paper was sold in 66. I know what do you know in the Fraser Valley who worked on paper for a while. And they wouldn't Saskatoon where he became the advertising manager for the Western producer, which is the prairies largest agricultural paper. And like Winston's, I was back at school in Edmonton from 69 to 72. And when he used to come up there to work and I move this back and forth, so quite quite a bit of a Moses. And as far as I know, I sort of lost track of that after some of this in Ontario said earlier I think what he wound up on the coast up there somewhere I really enjoyed the time it was kind of exciting to do in those days. Too much. So I think I think it was a very valuable experience where he actually worked with some a local businessman. Have you worked with them on paper and so on. It's interesting. What he was very definite proofreader taught me about proofreading skills. Everybody who's ever I've ever worked with or has worked for me dreads today. Still proofing. All in all, it's a fun time. Only we'll take it from here. So thank you 66.

Unknown Speaker 10:39
was more fun in the early days, I think, for a number of reasons. It's gotten the smaller, much smaller community and you knew more people, the editor, in particular, the owner of the paper, which helps the editor today doesn't own the paper and put some kind of freedom to speak out and do what she likes. But the last day of the hour was small and new just about everybody. So it felt more freedom. When you published. The Woody's paper I always enjoy going through these papers, that sense of fun is in almost every issue, that sense of humor yet, is in here. But the technology was certainly limited. In those days, I was going to talk about the technology quite a bit, as it's changed over the years. But first off, I should say that, due to technological problems, your paper didn't appear this morning in your mailbox. We haven't got it perfect yet with the press last night. They worked all night getting all the papers through the press release. They had a hell of a time our papers three hours late from Vancouver Island. I seen the audience a lot of people who have been featured in the in the paper. Over the years I've been going to a lot of the papers in the last few days preparing for this and I see a lot of faces here. Or the early papers. I've mowed sparring with Charles bolts are at school board meetings. And Duncan, as mentioned for going to university went to UBC and I'm surrounded by historians here I must confess, I'm going to be somewhat precise in my dates because it foggy but some of it. There is no printed record in our office of our history. And I brought this up today with our editors. Perhaps there shouldn't be. It saved me a lot of trouble the last few days trying to piece things together. But I don't know, when certain changes took place. And I really don't know what staff were involved at certain times over the years, I have to remember to remember the staff, but certainly not when they were involved. This exercise has been interesting for me preparing for this talk, because we never looked back and in our business, we are always looking ahead to the next deadline. Because that's the nature of our job. It's preparing for the next paper, because those damn deadlines commonly come suddenly and catch you off guard sometimes. So you're always planning ahead looking for the next deadline. And we rarely go back and look at old papers. We do once a year we have a system where we all get together those staff who wish to mostly editorial, and we review the previous year's papers and we're looking for possible entry sports competitions. And that's a good exercise because one of the worst failings of any newspaper that I've come across is this following up the stories, we read a story of the front page or an issue three weekend and we'll milk it for as long as we can sometimes for a couple of weeks, four or five weeks later, it's completely forgotten. We've forgotten all about it. And sometimes readers have to come in and prompt us and remind us Hey, what happened to the story? Well, we're not very good at doing that. And it's it's a failing, we've remarked before we tried to address it. But this exercise in the last few days here has taken me back and looking at papers and not just at the issues of the day, which is interesting enough, but how the paper actually ran what we were doing. I'm going to begin in 1967 By this time, Brookwood had been sold by WWE Fisher to Jim and Arlene Ward, and I believe that was in the 1964. Jim was a teacher on Saltspring but he is listed on the masthead as the publisher. And I think Arlene was probably the main person at the newspaper in those days. And I guess it was still in the same location is when you were when you were there. Don't bother Angie's Hill red clover Radio Shack is in an old building with green shingles on the walls. It's a stationary bookstore And Bob Lyndale was just down the block and later, just down the road, harbor low cost. So the words read the paper for about, I think it was three years, at which time my mother and father bought it. We moved from Sydney, that was the editor of the Sydney review. My mother was a homemaker, she had been a nurse, and hadn't worked for outside of the home for a number of years. And they bought this paper on a whim, I guess I know that I was quite vocal and suggesting that you do. So I looked like a good opportunity for me. And what did I know at the age of 14, but at least I had an opinion on the subject. And they, they decided in the MCU to buy the paper and one of the results for Ganges was a Saltspring was a sleeping place that those papers are copies of this is a copy of the paper from 6065 when the when the wards owned it, and it graduated from this format and style to this, which isn't really much graduation to my mind. But it wasn't improvement in that this was picking up on an offset press. And these were the days when offset printing was just coming to the fore was a photographic process replacing the old hot lead system, which is so common for many, many years. And the community papers really pioneered this whole system across Canada across North America, community papers by the way, and opposite printing. So the words had switched to the opposite press. And this is the kind of publication that they were putting out at the time.

Unknown Speaker 16:46
By 1969, our family had owned the paper for a couple of years. And that's what it had progressed to it actually retain this design for quite some time. The production of the paper was done on two typewriters, not the golf ball style, but two electric typewriters, one was eight point tape and one was 10 point. And so all the body text, as you see it here was set in this eight point type was ragged, right, which means it wasn't justified, the columns weren't even on both sides, the equipment did not have the capacity to do that. And all these heads, all the headlines on the stories, and all the display type in the advertising, all the larger type in the ads here was not done on the typewriter. Obviously, the typewriter was used for all the other smaller texts. But this little machine here, and I sweated over this thing for hours and hours every week as did my mother and my sisters. This is a headliner, this is our first headliner. And it said type one letter at a time, it was painful in Smoke did insert letters inside the slot here it was a little square, like a negative with the vector on the negative. And you turn this knob here to flash a light through the negative and onto a roll of filament sign up fill the paper and then you turn this knob to advance the paper. The required amount of spacing for each and better. So the end would take 30 points advance the I take about five. And this was how we said all those headlines one letter at a time. Sometimes well on to the early hours of the morning to get these in these heads done. So in those days. We really use a lot of small heads because I'm taping right

Unknown Speaker 18:55
now, as I said the the days were long, The nights were long, my mother and father. They slaved for two or three years at this project for a very small return. They were very hard but it was a labor of love. You're probably the crazy like many public schools were in those days trying to make a living out of the newspaper business. They had their ups and downs. There was one memorable name when they were trying to get the paper out Tuesday night Tuesday night has historically been our production names production dates day now we finished by four o'clock or Tuesday but in those days, it can go till two or three in the morning. It was one night when some very people trying to be helpful and friendly and neighborly came over with a bottle of wine, set the wine down on one of the paste up tables and shortly after it fell over and you know there's there's a whole page gone that had to be redone. So there's an extra two or three hours on the evenings to fix that data was the editor and the reporter, my mother did the advertising sales, production and administration. And there were one or two other people who did some bookkeeping and some some typesetting typesetting using classified ads, and lots of correspondence to and not the kind of correspondence you seen the paper today writing a call about this or that topic line or tardy or whatever. But correspondence like the Hamilton for instance, who wrote a history of Salt Spring, and many others, and from all the islands to not just from Salt Spring, writing about who's visiting who or who was visiting Putin the last week, and that was really calm. That was a it was a popular feature the paper I guess, see, Jackie, somebody smiling over there. Remember, it's, it's when I took over when they also I took over in 1979 was one of the things we draw, we thought, now we're going to be professional, we're gonna do this properly, we're gonna get rid of this gossip stuff. And well, today, I kind of miss it, you know, it wasn't a good thing to do. But in those days, it was it was fairly easy copy to get, I suppose, because the honest so like smaller, people knew everybody else. And we have these correspondents of different areas, the Hamilton and the South Bend and Jesse Sayer in Oregon. And they knew all the interesting side, it was news, people read it, people liked it.

Unknown Speaker 21:24
There was a lot more club news to not just the social, who's visiting who the Lions Club, they elected the president, which they did every year, it was a new story today, it doesn't happen as often or they don't get as much. And because there's so many older organizations on Saltspring there's so many more activities and so much more going on. It's challenging for a paper like ours to, to cover everything and still retain that sense of community. I think it's it's a big challenge for us. It's a bigger challenge for some of the suburban papers on mainland persons, where they have some geographical boundaries to find their communities. But that's about all and how does the community paper retain that sense of community because agents still be relevant to this readership? It's a challenge for us. It always will be.

Unknown Speaker 22:14
Yeah, she was. I keep coming back to that spot. Right, right here in 67. Saltspring was just tiny I had come from Sydney, which is a small town or ability to time again, Jesus. So small, traffic on Saltspring something else to very few cars after six o'clock in the evening, after Labor Day, the islanders die, tourists went home and there is no one. It was nice. I like today, but it was nice then. But for a newspaper. It was challenging sometimes when. In the early 70s, we moved up a step a major step in terms of how we put paper together, we purchased a copy graphic typesetting machine, which utilize to photographic and mechanical process. And it can do about four to six different type sizes, including all the body text, and it could do headlines 18 point. So I think that's when this machine was well retired. And that was in the early 70s. The new copy graphic also justified the title so that the body and columns of text were even on both sides and on the left. The in those years, the early 70s computerization, digitalization, those changes were really beginning to be felt in our business and in, in photography, photography, photography, and printing, I think, were the first areas in which computerization really had a big impact and continue to data have a huge impact. In 1978, we made our biggest ever capital purchase it was called the concept concept, it takes the machine. It replaced all our older type centers, because it did everything for us. It cost us $40,000, which in those days in 1978 was a huge amount of money. But it was worth it to streamline our production process, improve the way we did things and just make us better. And this machine was a computer. And it was a mechanical Tech Center for the tech center. And it took three more than three months to train someone to operate it. So we had an operator back then we train and she stayed with us for a long time. It's such a major undertaking the trains to be on this machine. But it was a marvelous thing it was before WYSIWYG, which is what you see is what you get on your computer screen as you as you seem to activate into any kind of publishing is any kind of publishing program and I can see on your computer screen, just what you're going to print. In those days, we have a computer screen that was all code. And that's where all the training came in. Because the operator had to learn all these different keystroke combinations on the keyboard. It was always coding entry to make type, do different things, center it, make it a certain size, set the spacing, but we could produce an ad, in one photograph, one photographic piece, I think was eight inches wide. So we could do a three or four, Paul wide ad one, whatever that in one go. We don't have to paste about not having to cut the text out or the typo and paste it up onto a board. And that was a huge, huge step for us in the state of the art. At the time. As I said, weekly papers in this country led the way in offset and offset printing a little typesetting production. I was shortly after that, that Alison I returned to Salt Spring and assumed operation of the paper component that they were anxious to do some traveling and relax a bit after having worked very, very hard for a number of years paper. By this time, we had moved our office, one of the first of a number of moves to what is now I think it's being operated by gifts. The society we used to set us apart in the mentally challenged people. It was Walter Carlson's sheet metal shop, it's behind the auto parts store. And in those days, we it was liquors direct to the most days. And on our mass hit at Red, we're located on the yellow dirt road behind the government liquor store and is the source of some amusement couriers from across the country. This this is our adverts point. And those days, when Alex Knight came on the scene that there were about eight of us in the office, were producing 16 to 28 pages a week. And within about three years, we're up to 32 or 44 pages that has nothing to do with why stewardship, but had a lot to do with the growth of the island. And the paper is simply a reflection of the community. And the larger the paper, the larger the community as a community has grown so as to pay for. It was a time of tremendous growth in the late 70s, early 80s. And we saw a huge growth in real estate advertising. And I continue to grow through the things. We duck and said it was fun. We always had fun. And one of the things we have often like to do over the years is this runs spoof pages. I was going through these papers this morning, and I thought they'd come out of our files. I came to page two and birthday greetings from the great one. And it's about a telegram being sent by peers from building my father and his 65th birthday. Well, this, this whole page was just a replay of the paper, there were only 50 copies printed. I thought this is in our files, I've only lost the real copy of the paper and it's just a spoof copy. We've done this a number of times in an effort to have fun and taken somebody in the community as Ramsey and one or two of the RCMP officers. And this time in 1983 We did it with my father, he wrote a bunch of phony stories and just have fun with it and surprised him with a on his birthday. We haven't done that for a long time, which reminds me that we're not having as much fun as we used to should make some changes. It was in the early 80s that the publisher relinquished to the editorial duties I was publisher and editor as well as my father before me. And by this time the paper was getting to be quite large it was it was becoming very stressful. And for years if it was the sake of my father, you go to bed Tuesday night, wake up in the middle of night and thinking you've forgotten something. Storage she got in admission and changed and this would you know it was a weekly thing to wake up at night awake first thing Wednesday morning with all these things on my mind. What am I missed? What have I forgotten? Sure. I've missed something. It was time to make a change. We heard a first editor wasn't the publisher don't come back to now join us to Lake Lake Tribune and made a huge difference to my life. And I guess the staff I just, we grew tremendously in the 80s. And our staff at the same time, we moved to a building on Rainbow Road from behind the liquor store during those years. It's now a parking lot, always trading company parking lot. And by this time I was selling advertising. We didn't used to sell advertising and other papers were doing and I thought, Well, maybe you should be selling advertising your business was good, but maybe we could do better. And, and that's how it turned out business was better as a result of this, it was a good move in our part. And so we began actively selling advertising to finance. Our next technological advance came in the early 80s When we bought a whole bunch of tRFC RadioShack computers. These were among the first computers on the market and finally referred to as trashy used by those of us who use them. And we took all the edit all the reporters were using typewriters from time to enter everything I typed later, the editor would edit the copy as to copy onto a tape Senator a person whose job it was to input all the stories. And so they are in effect the input twice somebody on a typewriter, somebody else's computer keyboard to get the text. So we introduced the trs 80. And get every reporter had one. So the extroverts simply enter the copy on the screen. And one of the machines that drove the text type seven, so if there is no other was automation, we eliminated a job. In theory, that person accident something else in the building, so we didn't have any positions, but we just it just made us more efficient. We ran we use those trs at square number of years. In the 80s, we moved to, to the location guy kind of movies.

Unknown Speaker 32:04
Before movies publicly there you see the Saltspring lands and buildings removed from downtown Ganges next to harbours and rain. And I love the waterfront view until they go close. We had to restore the barn. By 1989, it was time for change. I decided to do something else. And I went to Ottawa with proceeded. And before I did so I hired a publisher, Joyce Carlson moved to Salzburg in Powell river. And she ran the paper for about five years. Three of those years I was away, as Tom said, running a project in Africa. And then I came back, it was a good rest for me, I think many of us in this business get burnt out. It's the kind of business where you can get recovery easily. It's really stressful. And, and so the rest was great. I came back as editor, I didn't think I'd ever be an editor again. But I came back and I thought I would just get back to the new side. That's where I started. And that's where I went back. And so I was editor for 1994 Five. About three years ago, I thoroughly enjoyed that. Even though the issue of time is garbage. That's something else I haven't mentioned. When all these old papers, you go back 40 years, and you're gonna find the same old issues. I was debating School Board funding, you know, trying to squeeze more money out of the budget for for, for the school's sewers, sewers, Daniels sewer that features a very strong leader in a lot of these papers. And that's something I've learned as well. So Joyce Carlson joined us. Awesome. I left for one, we introduced Max, period, that's when the max came along with Macintosh computer. It was a huge change for the newspaper industry goodbye. Of course, most days they weren't that cheap. Very basic, what's what we consider basic today. Computer cost us about five or $6,000, then very little memory. But still it has the capacity to do great things for us. We've been using MAC's ever since. And obviously changing the one of the significant changes we've made in the last 10 510 years with the advent of the Mac computer and software with it such as Photoshop is the use of color and it was in the late 1890s That is down running color on a regular weekly basis. RFP on the front page is now something we do automatically every week 15 years ago to take that color photograph, whatever required having it taken by the Wednesday before seven days for would have to be very good for it would have to be sent to Victoria recruiters. So I'm not sure how we got it over there. But you have to move Victoria, who take three or four days to process, which the main color separations from that what are the negatives, and about $400 Later $400. A week later, we would have the negatives required to do to produce the color on the front page, and then another $400 to press for the cost of the color. So we didn't do it very often initially. Now, with the digital camera, we can take a picture on Tuesday afternoon at four o'clock. Having a print page and to the press is just absolutely remarkable. What we can do now, with digital photography, we used to publish a lot of other islands is from Turtle Island with Frank all the other islands. And it was always a real challenge getting filled. We just in the end a lot. We did not write pictures from the rounds as we send a photographer record cover story there because we just couldn't get the film back. We could with the advent of fax machine, which was a great plus for us. We could get the copy fax to work. And then eventually with email, we could get the stories emailed with other reporters. But at the same time, the rounds would have dropped that aside for us as a Saltspring was getting too big. And just wasn't enough leadership or advertising on the other islands. We don't cover much of what goes on.

Unknown Speaker 37:01
There just to summarize, I guess we too did an extra not to mention an extra that he had done. There was a one that we're kind of proud of was when the snow storm team, whatever that was, he was in sixth school. I might have to make up for the story. That snowstorm we went to work Monday morning. And most of us got in okay. It was challenging. We got in, we went to work. Two o'clock in the afternoon. We were pretty for time. And two o'clock in the afternoon. They call the press to let them know what the specs were on the pages and stuff and nobody answered. And I called again, there's no answer. So I tracked down the press manager is home and Sue called he was stuck in the hole nobody was depressed was buried under snow. Victoria lovers we did. It couldn't get it built again in the machine and through the snow away from the door. This was Tuesday by them. So they couldn't print this. They couldn't print anyway. So we put out a special live edition. We partnered rapids printing this 11 by 17 sheet. Both sides, we quickly sold the keypads

Unknown Speaker 38:16
for the covered smokes for you.

Unknown Speaker 38:21
If we've talked a lot about what would happen through an earthquake, we've never really figured that out and tried to pick the appropriate artists. There have been some low points over the years. I mentioned the sewer. It was such a divisive issue. And that's really where I feel he fell out was because I've come to realize since the newspaper the community newspaper has a role to play in uniting the community, bringing the community community together, helping to try and resolve problems, not resolving the presenting, trying to present the information in a way that helps to resolve issues resolve problems, we fail to do that. And I think we could have done a much better job in trying to prevent that issue from going on for so many years. It was it was really quite unpleasant. We almost sold the paper booth. Was that bad. The Firefly on journal was quite a challenge for us. Takes remain there on both sides and and its publisher and I have admitted that we've gone our separate ways and we've got past that. Probably the biggest challenges over the years been meeting the payroll during downtimes. But and it was tough. In the old days when I was basically a reporter running a business I didn't have a lot of business training

Unknown Speaker 39:48
at the time.

Unknown Speaker 39:52
We've made a few mistakes and not known about them until the papers come back from the press and that's what keeps coming It comes back to the press has gone. That was a Tuesday night, in fact, Wednesday morning. And sometimes it's a bit of a mystery as to how it all happened. But you get the paper and then you start going through it. You hold your breath waiting to see what have we done wrong this week. That's not very often anymore. But there was one one memory leak, which we ran to play just a nameplate on the front of all pilots driftwood. In those days it was This is Old English type style. We ran that in yellow,

Unknown Speaker 40:28
you couldn't see it.

Unknown Speaker 40:31
I came across a copy of that paper has recently a few months ago looking back that she's noticed. And that's how I saw a publisher and editor reveals the next Wednesday morning when we made a mistake and just feel so guilty, because I absolutely do. And there was other times nifty blue box in the front page, we got a picture that was one year, this depressing lady Smith screw up all the page numbers to put in the number was completely messed up. I don't know how they did it. But it's the charges for that paper, which is a blessing. But every Pay Page One was one but every other page numbers were all wrong, we had all the configuration was another other week, the process color photo on the front page didn't show up and Lady spent and they had to take a photo from inside the paper and stretch it manipulate it to fit the front and Soviets faces. In those days, this wasn't very long ago, we used to put the entire paper on a laser printer 11 by 17 sheets, thick slices of paper. And we would paste that up and send that over to ladies better to the press whether it was on Tuesday night on theory. And when the those when they're color coded and printed, because the separations takes four colors to make process black, because three colors, and we had to check the pages properly that quote just didn't appear on the output. That is always the last patient. One that we're in a hurry. Today, technology has gotten us to the point where we don't send it to ladies anymore physically, we transmitted by file transfer protocol. So we can make a PDF of every page just the last process on Tuesday is to make a PDF every page of the paper. And that's what we transmitted address, put it up in the FTP site press tab in there, and what very saying earlier about, like what are they indexing? We have those PDFs if you want them to have any value. We saved them all now every week. In fact, we save every photograph that Garrett London or reporters take is generally 200 200 to 300 images we take mostly by Derrick and those are all burned onto a CD that long with the PDFs of each newspaper. So we have that archives going back two years I would have to like I would have to tell you about one of the worst mistakes you've ever made was very painful at the time. And it was the cherry on the worst places for an error. And it was when Fred Curtis died. Fred Curtis was a well known Island big grew up bricklayer Chin's building and he died yes several years ago and find yourself anyway his obituary read the friends and family aid read purchase this was one of our high tech computer type centers of work that had just taken up towards the letter on the

Unknown Speaker 44:12
top of the and the elegant way to sort of present valley of belief Brent oh we have that was painful for about having laughing ever

Unknown Speaker 44:25
since records from another one was was a cut line. And this is a real nono in our business system put something in a story or hotline is not in attendance. Because chances are it will and this one did. And it was my father involved with people who drove the car behind you take a nice picture of a woman at a tea or something and call her Mrs. Watson peace

Unknown Speaker 45:01
And that's how it appears

Unknown Speaker 45:09
there's been a lot of high points over the years I've

Unknown Speaker 45:10
mentioned some low points there. But really the high points, remember the low ones, we've won a lot of awards. Which I'm very proud. But you know, when it comes down to it, it's what it's the it's the acceptance of the community is what counts and seeing people lining up lining up outside the office on Wednesday morning to buy the paper. Seeing subscribers coming into a new every year is really what makes my day my life. The finally, the newspaper is a unique, very unique business because it combines all the basic business functions, sales, production, distribution, and we're basically a manufacturing business. We're classified as a manufacturer, we WWE. You combine those things with creative design, to create creativity that goes into advertising, design, production, and into writing. And it's quite a mixture. It makes it a very special business and one that I enjoy very much.

Unknown Speaker 46:25
The publisher wants publisher? I know it's a good question. It's a question I asked myself quite often. And it varies from newspaper The newspaper in fact, I was it was funny hearing Duncan say that he used to proofread. That's my we had a proofreader until about three months ago, I suppose. And she, she worked hard at it, but she wasn't that good. And I was relieved when she left because I had the best proof for your at the office. And if you find a mistake, I want to hear fine. But that's that's one job. I do Tuesday, and I and I'm probably the only publisher in Canada, who proofreads the paper I think probably half or more of the papers and papers in the country unit for free because they lie and steal