NEWSPAPERS; LIBRARIES.
The sheer pluck shown, as a whole, by the early newspaper men is
worthy of all praise. It was a fairly safe thing for Mr. Nicholas Flood
Davin to found the Leader in the house of his friends in 1883, for Regina
was headquarters for two Governments, but Battleford, Fort Qu'Appelle,
Moosomin, Macleod, Medicine Hat and Lethbridge were mere villages
which had little to give but local support, and presented fields which called
for courage. Mr. P. G. Laurie of Battleford stands out at this distance of
time almost as a heroic figure, as the founder of the first newspaper in the
Territories. Most people speaking off-hand would say that Frank Oliver
was the pioneer publisher of the Territories. It was a courageous thing
for Mr. Oliver (afterwards to become so outstanding a figure in the west)
to go into Edmonton, two hundred miles north of Calgary in 1880, but
Mr. Laurie went in when the nearest shipping point was Winnipeg. It is
not generally known that Mr. Laurie made a gallant attempt to reach the
west in 1860. He was impeded by illness, in his family on the way, and
remained at Detroit. A few years later he reached Winnipeg and was
engaged in newspaper work. Then in 1878 he moved to Battleford where
Governor Baird was already established in the new capital after a prelimi-
nary stay at Livingstone Barracks, Swan River, as told at some length
elsewhere. He called his paper the Saskatchewan Herald, and as early
as 1885 he advocated the formation of a full province to be called "Sas-
katchewan". He was an able and courageous man, and the father of the
press of Saskatchewan and Alberta. It is interesting to know that the
paper, established and carried on under difficulties, has had an uninter-
rupted career. Today after a course of nearly fifty years it retains its
name and is still in the family, the present proprietor being Mr. R. C.
Laurie. As the pioneer printer, who literally went into the wilderness
and made a success of what in the hands of many would have been a
hopeless enterprise, Mr. P. G. Laurie's memory will be honored and
cherished for all time. A very interesting story could doubtless be written
of our early newspapers.
In 1890 there was one daily paper in the Territories, viz., the Calgary
Herald. The Lethbridge News was a semi-weekly, and the weekly papers
were Regina Leader, Regina Standard (succeeding Regina Journal),
Edmonton Bulletin, Medicine Hat Times, Vidette (Fort Qu'Appelle),
Progress (Qu'Appelle Station), Macleod Gazette, Moose Jaw Times and
Moosomin Courier. The old Territorial newspaper men make quite an
impressive group. We have already referred to Mr. P. G. Laurie. Names
forgotten today are, Beer of Moosomin and Fitz Cochran of the Prince
Albert paper. Davin of the Leader, although not the most able, was the
most brilliant. Hugh Quentin Cayley of Calgary, although a lawyer by
profession, was a born newspaper man, and he certainly made himself felt
as editor of the Calgary Herald. He was for a time Premier of the Ter-
ritories. Mr. Frank Oliver (who became Minister of the Interior) of the
Bulletin, Mr. Walter Scott (first premier of Saskatchewan), and Mr. J. K.
Mclnnis (who was unfortunate in his attempts to win legislative honors)
made a Big Three of whom their fellow journalists may well be proud.
The English these men wrote at their best was worthy of any press in
the world. Other editors of note were the present Judge Wood (Macleod
Gazette), A. C. Paterson (Progress), Proctor (Vidette), J. Atkinson (Re-
gina Journal), J. J. Young, and William Trant (a British journalist of
distinction). The younger school who have followed them, worthily main-
tain the old tradition.
The Territorial Library did not amount to a great deal perhaps from a
strictly library point of view, but when the first librarian for the new
province of Saskatchewan was appointed he found that a valuable nucleus
had been formed, showing that a ripe judgment had now and again been
brought to bear. The present Saskatchewan Library has frequently met
with the approval of men well qualified to judge. It has had rather a
chequered career. The present Librarian writing in the Public Service
monthly gave the following account of
A PIONEER LIBRARY.
"The old Territorial library was for a considerable time housed in a
small room in what was originally the Indian office building at the old
government buildings at the time the Indian headquarters for the West
were in Regina. In 1899 it was occupying the principal room in the old
Indian office and was comfortably housed considering its size. In 1907
when I took possession, it had been moved to the west end of the building
facing on Dewdney Avenue. The rest of the government offices had been
moved down town, mostly over the Regina Trading Store. The room the
Library then occupied was about the size of a fairly spacious dining room,
ill-lighted and insalubrious. It was packed with bookcases 11 feet high,
made, and very well made, too, by an European workman, a Mr. Kauten-
brunner. These were of the most approved and archaic pattern, made of
pine, with glass doors. The shelves, being of soft wood, sagged under the
weight of heavy books, and sometimes one had trouble in locking and
unlocking the cases. They were, perhaps providentially, put out of busi-
ness in the cyclone.
"The library shared the building with Dr. Charlton, the Provincial
Bacteriologist. The doctor performed his frequently unsavory investiga-
tions overhead. In the cellar beneath my feet was a very interesting
collection of animals which the doctor maintained for experimental pur-
poses. These comprised cats, guinea pigs, mice and poultry. When the
doctor was analysing a stomach overhead and the animal-caretaker was
cleaning out the quarters of his odoriferous pets in the cellar, the aroma
the librarian had to inhale was not precisely that of Araby the Blest. The
climax was reached when one spring the cellar became flooded. I was
informed the other day that weird relics of that very bacteriological
menagerie are still strewn about that cellar. During the first session after
my appointment, the reading room was represented by a kind of kitchen
table in a little room outside the lobby. Some outsider had charge of it.
The papers used to be on this little table in the most disorderly jumble.
"Next year a room upstairs was used as a reading room. I was per-
sonally in charge. The room was originally the office of the Board of
Works, and was of the half-story variety. A very tall man could touch
the ceiling. At the time it was the Public Works office, the engineering
and clerical staff for the whole of the territories, comprising a country
certainly as large as Europe without Russia, consisted of Mr. Tom Brown
(dead many years ago), his brother, Mr. Dan Brown, subsequently
sergeant-at-arms, now retired, Mrs. Grover, and I think a boy.
"This reading room I shared with the Speaker and the Clerk of the
Assembly, the far end being curtained off and constituting a dressing
room for those exalted functionaries. It was an endless source of quiet
amusement to me to watch the metamorphosis of my old friend, Speaker
MacNutt. He would enter the reading room in a business suit and dis-
appear behind the curtain; presently, perhaps, I would be talking to him,
he being at this time in his underclothing; then he would emerge, grandly
dignified in decorous dark raiment with his academic Speaker's gown and
his three-cornered hat, prepared to preside with due dignity and solemnity
over the deliberations of the North-West Assembly. The difference be-
tween the Speaker in the two garbs I have indicated was really very
striking.
"For two years I remained at the old government buildings under these
conditions. On entering upon my duties I had visions of really doing
something. I entered into a more or less elaborate correspondence. with
my brother librarians, who were extremely kind, but eventually it dawned
upon me that, without assistance, without money, without room, and with
the library a mile or more from the departments and the government, it
was simply impossible to make headway, and I carried on the library
single-handed, making such purchases as means permitted.
"Then the library was moved in a violent hurry to make room for the
Ruthenian Teachers' Institute. The only available place for its reception
was a small room in the basement of the Land Titles office on Victoria
Avenue. I had to utilise parts of the engine and ventilating rooms in the
basement to eke out the room. The books had to be taken out of the cases
on Dewdney Street and piled on the floor of the new home, like ill-assorted
bricks, in the most dire and absolute confusion. Then the cases had to be
set up one by one, necessitating a shifting about of the books which,
expressed in terms of colour, was kaleidoscopical, but eventually the library
was reconstructed. Two sunless years in the basement and again this
nomadic and sorely tried library was on the move-this time to the unfin-
ished Parliament Buildings. The library room proper was not ready, so
the library, with its bookcases, was set up after another period of dire
confusion-for it was impossible to maintain any order in the removal-
owing to the fact that the books had to be moved first before the cases in
which they were to be replaced could be moved at all, and owing to the
fact that the only receptacle for them in the meanwhile was the floor.
Again the library was reduced from chaos to order. The archaic cases
again bore their precious bibliographical contents duly sectionalised and
arranged. I was now looking forward to a reasonably peaceful removal
of the library to its permanent quarters.
"Then came the cyclone and smashed the whole business into a confused
mass of plaster, broken glass, wood, books and papers, on the floors. This
had to be retrieved, but the permanent rooms were also out of business,
for the cyclone had broken out of the south rooms, crossed the corridor
and knocked two gigantic holes 20 or 30 feet long in the present library
rooms. The books were piled up in an orderly but totally unsectionalised
heap at one end of the new rooms, and there they had to lie for some
weeks till the Duke of Connaught had come and gone, as the rooms were
needed for reception purposes.
"By this time the session was close upon us. Every book had to be
cleaned from dust and plaster. The rooms were absolutely bare. There
was not a table, a shelf, a chair or a desk. I rustled wooden tables and
planks from Mr. Lecky, the contractors' representative, and in this way
got a lot of improvised table space. We made a hurried selection of books
likely to be needed in the session; rustled a table or two and some chairs,
and in that shape we met the assembled legislators, and went through the
session. The next session found us no better off, for the planning and
equipping of the new library took time. For eighteen months the library
was carried on without a pigeon hole, or a shelf, or a particle of furniture
which belonged to it. What furniture we had was the discard of other
offices.
"I have not been able to refrain from using this, the first legitimate
opportunity I have had of telling, however briefly, the eventful history of
this most unfortunate library, which has existed in rat holes and base-
ments, has been bombarded by cyclones, and has been moved three times in
seven years under my jurisdiction. I will conclude this 'moving' story by
making an extraordinary statement, and that is that all this moving has
been done and endured without the library suffering twenty dollars' worth
of loss or damage, and that it has always performed its functions without
a single complaint being registered against it."
TRAVELING LIBRARIES.
Two interesting features of existing library effort in the Province are
provided by the Traveling Library System and the "Open Shelf". The
Traveling Libraries number eight hundred, and are confined to rural
districts. What these eight hundred libraries of well-selected, and up-to-
date books mean to the country districts, especially in the winter, can be
better imagined than described.
In the building up of this really great system for supplying scattered
settlements with clean literature, the names of Miss Thora Paulson (now
Mrs. Albert) and the present head, Miss Margaret McDonald, B. A.,
deserve very high and honorable mention. The cities and towns supply
their own libraries, and some light may be thrown on this branch of
activity by the following account of
THE WEYBURN PUBLIC LIBRARY.
The Weyburn Public Library was first brought into existence by the
unanimous resolution of the city council on January 13, 1920. The
presentation and passing of the resolution was largely due to the untiring
efforts of Mr. A. Kennedy, Inspector of Public Schools, Weyburn. Tbe
first Board of Management consisted of the following members: W. J.
Jolly, chairman, Mrs. J. N. Mertz, Mrs. M. A. Millar, Miss R. Hicks and
A. W. Massey, Secretary-Treasurer.
In May, 1920, definite steps were taken by the Board to bring the
library under the Provincial Public Libraries Act. A petition for that
purpose was drafted and within a few months a By-Law was assented to
by an overwhelming vote. The city council made a grant of $400.00 for
support of the library in the year 1920 and gave two rooms in the city
hall for the use of the library. The reading room was opened for general
use of the public in November, 1921.
June, 1921, saw the beginning of the reference department by the
purchasing of the encyclopaedia Britannica. In September, 1921, the
Board lost the able services of its secretary, A. W. Massey, B.A., who
resigned his position as principal of the Weyburn Collegiate Institute
to accept a similar position in Eastern Canada. Mrs. M. A. Millar was
elected Secretary-Treasurer in Mr. Massey's place. In October, 1921,
the Public School Board turned over to the library board some 200 books,
formerly the property of the Mechanic's Institute. By the end of the
year, 1922, a most up-to-date reference department was in operation and
is now used extensively by students of the Normal School and Collegiate
Institute.
The Board, because of financial conditions, did not make provision in
its estimates for the opening of a lending department for the year 1923,
but so insistent were the demands for bringing the library into the homes
that the Board called on the various organizations and clubs in the city
to assist in the enterprise. The various organizations handsomely con-
tributed by means of cash donations, annual grants, tag day gifts and
book showers with the result that the Board was in a position to open the
lending department on the first of October, 1923, with over 1200 books
on the shelves. In the selection of the books every care is taken. The
Board is assisted by a book committee consisting of representative men
and women of various organizations and institutions in the city. Shortly
before the opening of the lending department the Board was particularly
fortunate in securing the services of J. H. Leggett as librarian.
The library is free and the privileges of the lending department are
also open to non-residents of the city on making a deposit of $2.00, which
amount is returned to the borrower on surrender of the book and card.
The Board expects by the end of the year 1923 that at least 300 borrowers
will avail themselves of the lending department.
SASKATCHEWAN TRADITION.
The time may soon come when the young men and women of Saskatche-
wan will look at home for at least a portion of the inspiration that comes
from the traditions and the sagas of the past. "The glory that was Greece
and the grandeur that was Rome" may not surround the tradition of
Saskatchewan, but there is no glory of Greece or greatness of Rome which
is not cast into the shade beside the mighty traditions of the British
Empire, in all of which we share, being partakers of a common heritage.
And the Story of Saskatchewan is the microcosm of the Story of the
British Empire. The thunders of war have rolled along the shores of the
Hudson Bay and found their echo in our own war of '85. The sons of
Saskatchewan have gone forth as crusaders in great wars waged on dis-
tant continents. They have struggled for political freedom while simul-
taneously wrestling with the forces of nature. Primitive plains remote
from markets have been reclaimed for civilization and the feeding of the
world. A commonwealth has been created in the face of many hardships
and difficulties. The Indian, the men of the mixed race, the Hudson's Bay
factors and traders and trappers, the North-West voyageurs and couriers
of the woods, the pioneers in adventure, in agriculture, in the professions,
in commerce, in politics and the arts, the people who came for freedom and
free land from all parts of the earth-all these are legitimate material out
of which can be woven a tradition which those who come after us on these
plains may be proud to inherit, to cherish, and it may be to live up to.
The boys and girls of Saskatchewan should not be taught that they are
the product of the new and the crude, but that they are the citizens of no
mean country, a country which has a past not merely of primitive struggle,
but a past which can be equalled by few as a setting for stories of real
heroism, real romance and real achievement in the interests of modern
civilization and advance.
NOTE: In looking back at the conclusion of our task we feel compelled
to acknowledge the services of Mrs. Leslie Minor (daughter of the writer),
for without her intelligent and unfailing assistance this book could not
have been produced.
Bibliography follows: