A century serving the community

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This article was published 24/11/2017 (2893 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For the past century, in one form or another, The Herald has been documenting life in northeast Winnipeg.

 “Community papers play an integral role in the community,” said Wanda McConnell, a former reporter and editor for The Herald.

“They provide an important service, sharing information with the community that the community needs to know.”

Founded by Scottish immigrant brothers, the Elmwood Advertiser has changed its format and name a number of times over the century it has been publishing. But at heart, the spirit of their publishing endeavour remains unchanged over the years.

From Transcona to Elmwood

John and Norman McLean were born in Campbeltown, Scotland, in the 1880s. Norman moved to Canada in 1911, stopping first in Qu’Appelle, Sask., before settling in Transcona, where he met up with brother John.

On Jan. 1, 1912, the McLeans took over ownership of the Transcona Times newspaper, founded in 1910 by K. S. Thordarson. The pair ran the weekly Times for five years before folding the struggling paper in 1917 and moving their printing operation from Transcona to Elmwood.

“The change has been decided upon after careful thought and deliberation,” the McLeans wrote in a notice published in the Transcona Times in the weeks leading up to the relocation.

At the time, Elmwood was a growing district, having amalgamated with the city of Winnipeg in 1906. The McLeans opened shop in a small, one-storey building at 155 Kelvin St. (later renamed Henderson Highway) and began publishing the Elmwood Advertiser in the fall of 1917.

“It meant a lot to them, to have that paper going and getting the community more information, locally,” said Beverly Berzuk, daughter of Norman McLean’s son Norman (Bunt) McLean.

Before long, both men became immersed in the Elmwood community. The two were well known at Gordon King Memorial United Church, the Elmwood Curling Club, and the Prince Edward Legion, among other local organizations. At one point, Norman served as president of the Manitoba Weekly Newspaper Association and was the honorary president of the Elmwood Curling Club.

Following the end of the First World War, they were joined by brothers Archie and Bob in the operation of the paper. However, when the Great Depression hit, Bob and Archie were forced to leave the enterprise. Mabel Meyers, though, joined the team in 1921 and stayed until 1960.

“She ran the office, organized the circulation department and started an annual $1 subscription in 1929,” explained Berzuk, who delivered the paper along Melbourne Avenue with her sister as a child.

New home, new name

McLean Printers Ltd. would publish the Elmwood Advertiser every Thursday until 1929, when they crossed the street and opened up a new shop a few blocks north at the corner of Kelvin Street and Hart Avenue. With the move, the pair changed the name of their paper to the Elmwood Herald.

While the Advertiser had always published notices from local churches, service, and community clubs and news pieces between ads for local businesses, the Herald took on a greater news angle, reporting on local council decisions and extending its coverage further into East Kildonan, at the time still a separate municipality with a growing population.

“For some time it has been felt that Elmwood’s growing importance warrants this weekly publication stepping out into the regular newspaper field,” the McLeans wrote in an editorial that ran on the front page of the paper’s Sept. 5, 1929 “debut” edition. “The Herald greets you! It is here to record the news of your district, and with ample space to devote to the happenings of the community.”

The next generation

Following the Second World War, John and Norman’s sons, the junior John and Norman (Bunt) McLean, joined the family business, and eventually took it over. John McLean Sr. was the editor, while Norman handled much of the press work. John Jr. became a lineotype operator, while Bunt worked the press.

“I remember it being a huge, huge press,” recalled Berzuk, who spent long hours in the shop each Thursday as the papers came off the press and her mother, Eileen, helped fold each paper individually.

“My dad would have to feed the paper into the machine one piece at a time to print the paper each week. That was the old clunker, the old Linotype machines and the Miehle Pony. It took years to get the ink off his hands, he said, and it was true. Every day he’d come home with black hands from the ink.”

The second generation of McLean Printers maintained the community mandate of The Herald. Both men were also involved in Elmwood organizations, such as the Prince Edward Legion.

“There are a lot of good memories but a lot of frustration for my dad,” Berzuk recalled. “I remember him being upset because there wasn’t enough news or enough advertisements. I listened to all the complaining, and talk about how to make it better, all that.”

For a period in the 1950s, the paper featured wire copy pertaining to national and international news, entertainment, and sports alongside local news stories, church and community centre bulletins, and coverage of local sports teams, such as the storied Elmwood Giants baseball club.

“If you really wanted to have an idea of what this area was like, in terms of newspaper coverage, (The Herald) is the best source,” said Jim Smith, president and historian/archivist with the North East Winnipeg Historical Society. “As a a source for information, it is very good.”

The paper dropped much of its national and international stories by the 1960s, returning instead to the local stories that had always been its bread and butter.

For a brief period in ’60s, the name of the paper was even changed to the East Kildonan and Elmwood Herald to represent its growing coverage area, while the paper’s tagline proclaimed it was “the only weekly newspaper covering Elmwood, East and North Kildonan.”

The name was eventually shortened again to simply The Herald in 1970, when Reliance Press Community Papers bought the paper.

Unicity and beyond

With the opening of the Disraeli Freeway in 1959, development in northeast Winnipeg exploded. By 1972, when the old City of Winnipeg and 12 surrounding municipalities amalgamated as Unicity, The Herald’s coverage extended east to the Park City and the north into neighbouring RM of East St. Paul as well.

In 1985, The Herald moved from the offices of Reliance Press Community Papers — which also published current Canstar papers The Metro (as Metro One), The Lance, and The Times — on Erin Street in the West End to a new printing plant at 33 Bentall St., not far from where the paper is published today at 1355 Mountain Ave.

“We’re growing with Winnipeg,” said publisher Brock V. Cordes at the time. “The move was made to accommodate the expansion of these rapidly growing companies and consolidate the staff into one happy family.”

In 1987, Cordes sold the Reliance papers to the then-Southam-owned Flyer Force, which in 1990 sold them to Montreal-based Transcontinental. Transcontinental operated the Winnipeg weeklies through a local subsidiary called Canadian Publishers (later Transcontinental Weeklies) until the titles — which had been bolstered by the acquisition of the Headingley Headliner — were sold to FP Canadian Newspapers in 2004. Operations moved into the Free Press building at 1355 Mountain Ave. in 2008.

“It was a real period of growth,” McConnell said of her time at The Herald, which stretched from 1984 to 2004. “Tons of condos were going up, and co-operative housing that was exciting to watch. Gateway Rec Centre was built, and of course the Kildonan Settlers Bridge and the Chief Peguis Trail.”

Community stories in the 21st century

Growth in northeast Winnipeg has continued. Infill developments are constantly applying for rezoning before the East Kildonan-Transcona Community Committee, and major developments are taking place today in West Transcona that will eventually see upwards of 20,000 new people call the area home.

One aspect of The Herald’s community-based coverage McConnell said she always enjoyed was following the stories of notable local characters, such as the adventurous paddlers Don Starkell and Victoria Jason.

“It was an amazing story of these intrepid adventurers,” she said.

While the look of the paper has changed many times over the past century, The Herald continues to tell the stories of local people, and to act as a place where local businesses can appeal directly to the local market.

“That’s never really changed,” McConnell said. “It’s neat to think that perhaps 100 years from now that someone will be looking through old Herald articles to find out the history of this community.”

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