Club presses ever on

It was a bitterly cold February night 125 years ago when journalists from Winnipeg's daily newspapers gathered at the newly constructed city hall, the famous "gingerbread" building on Main Street. They had braved the minus 30s temperatures on Saturday, Feb. 12, 1887, to establish the Winnipeg Press Club.

Winnipeg in 1887 had a population of about 25,000 people, and was served by three dailies, the Free Press, the Manitoban, and the Sun. The publishers, editors and journalists from all three were involved in setting up the new press club.

The first president of the club was Thomas H. Preston, the managing director of the Sun. A name now legendary in Canadian journalism appeared in the list of those elected to the new club's executive committee -- John W. Dafoe of the Free Press.

Dafoe was then 20 years old, but he had already been a journalist for more than three years, starting in Montreal and Ottawa. He had come to Winnipeg in 1886 to work for the founder of the Free Press, W.F. Luxton. Dafoe would move back to Montreal in 1892, then return to Winnipeg in 1901 to serve as editor of the Free Press.

From the beginning, the press club's mission was a mixture of the serious and the social, and they wasted no time getting started. In its Feb. 14, 1887 article on the press club's first election of officers, the Free Press reported, "The executive committee were instructed to interview the hotel-keepers and report on the advisability of holding a dinner at the next meeting of the club."

But before the dinner took place, there was also some serious business. On March 19, 1887, the Free Press reported that the executive committee of the Press Club "will hold a meeting this afternoon at four to discuss some proposed amendments to the present law of libel."

The press club's first dinner took place on Saturday, April 9, 1887, and the club fully expected the newsmen to pay their way for a change. As the Free Press reported on the following Monday, "In order to give the newspaper men of the city the entirely novel sensation of paying for a ticket to a banquet the Press Club held a dinner on Saturday evening at the C.P.R. dining hall."

The article went on to describe the evening, which consisted of dinner followed by a series of toasts and replies, until the event ended at midnight. It set the pattern for dinners that followed.

A year later, Dafoe had become treasurer of the press club, and the dinner that year added a third dimension to the press club's mission -- a focus on Manitoba's newspaper history. The highlight of that dinner, on March 31, 1888, was the reading of a paper prepared by William Coldwell, describing the adventures of setting up the first newspaper in the Red River Settlement in 1859, the Nor'Wester. (Coldwell was unable to attend the event due to ill health.)

The Free Press also reported on April 2, 1888, that one of the toasts at the dinner was to the "Newspaper of the future," with a response by J.W. Dafoe.

The principal summer activity for the press club seems to have been baseball, with a press club team challenging representatives of other industries. On July 14, 1888, the Free Press reported, "Weather permitting, the press club and city telegraphic fraternity will engage in a deadly struggle for supremacy on the baseball field this afternoon."

Early in 1889, Dafoe, then 22, was elected vice-president of the press club, and he was joined on the club's executive by 28-year-old Robert Lorne Richardson, then city editor of the Sun.

Between them, Dafoe and Richardson would help to develop the structure of Winnipeg journalism in the 20th century -- Dafoe as editor of the Free Press from 1901 to 1944, and Richardson as the founder, editor and publisher of the Winnipeg Tribune from 1890 to 1920.

Dafoe and Richardson would also have a profound influence on journalism across Canada, when they joined with others in 1907 to oppose the monopoly held by the Canadian Pacific Railway's telegraph company on the distribution of Associated Press in Canada.

Dafoe and Richardson helped create Western Associated Press -- the forerunner of the Canadian Press news service.

Dafoe's election to the executive of the press club in its first year was the beginning of an association that would last almost 57 years, culminating in a Winnipeg Press Club dinner in the fall of 1943 honouring Dafoe's 60 years in journalism. Dafoe died the following January.

There was a lot of history ahead for the Winnipeg Press Club and its members following that first official meeting on Feb. 12, 1887.

As it celebrates its 125th anniversary, the press club's mission is still a mixture of "the serious and the social" and it is still relevant in a world in which "the press" now encompasses multiple platforms and multiple devices.

Ken Goldstein is a Winnipeg-based media expert and a director of the Winnipeg Press Club.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 11, 2012 J11