Cathy English
Contributor
This article was features in Thee Retro Review, a special publication from the Revelstoke Review which celebrates the 134 year history of print media in our community.
Newspapers are important to the life of a community. As well as imparting news, they can shape opinion, and can reflect the nature of a community.
Revelstoke Museum & Archives holds most of Revelstoke’s newspapers in its collection.
They are a great source of information, but they can be frustrating as well.
The early newspapers were written in a florid style, where the general rule seemed to be that the writer should never use one word where ten would do.
This means that the reader often has to wade through a lot of verbiage to get to the meat of a story.
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It is important to remember who was writing, editing, and publishing the local newspapers.
They were controlled by local businessmen, all of whom were male, of British extraction, and generally upper class.
This caused a bias that is especially evident when the stories were about visible minorities, non-British Europeans, women, and poor people.
The racial prejudice was often blatant, and there were no filters on the language used, meaning that racial slurs often appeared in the newspapers.
Bias can also be found in what was not appearing in the newspaper.
For example, records show that 84 Chinese people died in Revelstoke between 1896 and 1955, but only 33 of them had obituaries printed in the newspaper.
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Humble beginnings
Revelstoke’s first newspaper was the Kootenay Star, which began publication on June 22, 1889.
The editor was James W. Vail, and the owner was Hugh McCutcheon, who was also the owner and publisher of the Kamloops Sentinel.
Revelstoke Museum & Archives has an original copy of the first edition, which includes this editorial:
The Kootenay Star doffs its beaver to the public and announces that it is here to stay. It is not published for the purpose of “filling a long-felt want,” the enterprise being a purely business one, established on a business foundation for the purpose of advancing so far is it is able the interests of the district it represents, and profiting by such advancement. The STAR will be essentially the people’s paper – started and maintained in the people’s interests. Every man – be he Grit or Tory, Loyalist or Liberal – will receive his just due from the STAR. The subject of mining will receive in these columns that attention which, as the most important industry in the province, it demands.
The Kootenay Star continued to publish until its last issue on March 31, 1894. The editor left the readers with a rather self-pitying piece of doggerel poetry called “The Star’s Farewell.”
Here are two of the five stanzas:
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‘Twas difficult to please more than one or two each week,
For each reader had an idea of his own
On every topic ‘neath the sun, how a paper should be run,
And scrupled not to let the same be known.
I’ve been criticized and cuss’d; I’ve been victimized and wuss –
I’ve been starved and neglected and unloved.
Without a dollar or a cent, all my debts paid but the rent,
In the journalistic boneyard I am shoved.
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Most issues of the Kootenay Star contained just four pages, with local news and advertisements on the front and back pages, and fillers in the two middle ones.
The fillers consisted of stories, poems, and news from around the world.
The Kootenay Mail newspaper took over immediately from where the Kootenay Star left off, its first issue printed on April 14, 1894. The inaugural editor was R.W. Northey, who had previously worked for the Kootenay Star. It was owned by the Revelstoke Printing and Publishing Company, a consortium of local businessmen.
They had a printing press that required two operators – one to feed the paper sheets and take the impressions, and the other to ink the forms. The press was capable of printing 250 two-page sheets per hour.
The first editorial proclaimed:
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The MAIL has no pull with any individual, corporation, or political party, but will pursue a strictly independent course on the dividing wall, which will enable it to take a whack at any offending head which pops up on either side.
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An editorial column appeared in the paper titled, “Things said and done about town,” by Diogenes, who was most likely Northey.
In columns in February and March of 1895, he made comments that angered the directors, who tried to oust him from his position.
Instead, Northey barricaded himself in the office and printed an issue with his version of events. He finally had to leave to find something to eat, at which time the directors went into the newspaper office, and locked Northey out.
They produced their own issue, leaving out Northey’s comments, and asking readers who may have seen the first version to ignore it.
Revelstoke Museum and Archives has a copy of Northey’s version of the newspaper, as well as the official version issued by the directors.
They are marked Exhibit A and Exhibit B, and were used in a court case after Northey filed a suit claiming compensation for his dismissal.
He was awarded a settlement of $260, but that was the end of his career in Revelstoke. He moved on to Rossland where he continued to work in the newspaper business.
Burton Roy Campbell came to Revelstoke in 1895 from Kamloops to work at the Kootenay Mail as a printer. He was 17 years old at the time.
The newspaper was short of funds due to the Northey settlement, and Campbell and the other printer occasionally went on strike, and refused to print the paper when they were not paid.
On one occasion, William Cowan, one of the directors of the company, encouraged Campbell to go on strike because he needed him to play in a local soccer game.
Cowan even agreed to pay Campbell a week’s wages.
In April 1896, B.R. Atkins became an owner and took over as editor. Campbell became a partner in the company at the age of 19.
Editor B.R. Atkins left the newspaper to work as private secretary to B.C. Premier Semlin and sold his half-share in the paper to Campbell on March 31, 1899.
The legal documents had to be post-dated to April 29, 1899, the day following Campbell’s 21stbirthday, as he couldn’t legally own the business before that time.
Campbell eventually moved back to Kamloops, where he continued to work as a linotype operator.
He was a member of the International Typographical Union for 60 years.
The Kootenay Mail finally had a local competitor when the Revelstoke Herald began publication on Jan. 18, 1897, with publisher Arthur Johnson and editor Richard Parmeter (Parm) Pettipiece.
Pettipiece was born in Ontario in 1875 and worked on Edmonton and Calgary newspapers before coming to Revelstoke.
He later published the Ferguson Eagle in the Lardeau mining community of Ferguson, and then moved to Vancouver in 1901.
He was a staunch trade unionist and socialist, and is credited as one of the founders of the Socialist Party of Canada.
Growing competition and heated rivalries
The Kootenay Mail and the Revelstoke Herald were on opposite sides in provincial politics, although there was not a defined party system as we know it today.
When J.D. Sibbald was appointed as gold commissioner in the fall of 1897, the Herald supported him and sided against J.M. Kellie, M.P.P., who did not approve of Sibbald’s appointment.
The Mail supported Kellie and stated that the Herald and its “peanut gang” were the only ones supporting Sibbald.
After Sibbald was ousted as gold commissioner in January 1899 after a change in government, the Mail editor, B.R. Atkins, suggested that Sibbald had appropriated funds meant for road work.
Sibbald sued Atkins and the Mail for libel but the charges were dismissed.
The Revelstoke Herald and the Kootenay Mail merged in January 1906 and operated as the Mail-Herald until April 1917.
A rival newspaper, the Observer, was in operation from December 1908 until August 1909.
The owner, publisher and editor was E.A. Haggen, who had come to Revelstoke from New Zealand in 1901 and had joined the staff of the Kootenay Mail.
Haggen started the Observer partly to fight a campaign against the Mail-Herald and its principal owner, lawyer George McCarter. He also railed against local MP Thomas Taylor and Police Magistrate W.W. Foster.
Haggen also worked as a mining engineer, stockbroker, insurance agent and real estate agent, and his own ads dominated the Observer.
Even some of his supposed news items promoted his other businesses as the newspaper was quite self-serving.
Haggen was charged as a result of a financial dispute with McCarter and with sawmill owner S.A. Mundy, and he used his newspaper to report all of the details of the court case.
He was eventually acquitted.
The story of the Review
The Revelstoke Review began publication on April 11, 1914, and has been Revelstoke’s longest-running newspaper.
W.H. Bohannan was the first editor and manager, but was soon succeeded by Arthur Johnson.
The newspaper took a firm stand in favour of the provincial Liberal party, and likely played a part in the defeat of Thomas Taylor and the election of Dr. W.H. Sutherland in the 1916 election.
Once the Mail-Herald ceased publication in 1917, the Review had a clear field until the 1970s.
Arvid Lundell was born in Revelstoke in 1899. When the Revelstoke Review began publishing, he was a newsboy, delivering papers in town.
He became editor in 1927, with J.H. Mohr as manager. Lundell was associated with the Review until his death in 1984.
He became president of the Canadian Weekly Newspapers Association in 1967.
Lundell was mayor of Revelstoke from 1962 to 1969, and also served as an MLA for several terms.
Elizabeth and Hartley Lundell, daughter and son of Arvid Lundell, purchased the Revelstoke Review in 1981 and owned it until Dec. 31, 1991, when it was purchased by Westmount Press.
Elizabeth Lundell continued as the editor until June 12, 1992.
The newspaper was amalgamated with the Revelstoke Times on Nov. 1, 1992, and became known as the Times Review.
Lundell filed a lawsuit for unjust termination from her job and also claimed that the merger of the two newspapers broke an agreement she had with Westmount Press.
Lundell was awarded six months salary, but her claim of misrepresentation was dismissed.
The Revelstoke Times began life as Front Row Centre with editor Penny Graham and publisher Susan Oliver in June 1985, as a monthly journal focusing on community stories. It later became a weekly newspaper and was renamed Revelstoke Times in January 1989.
The newly amalgamated Times Review published its first issue on Nov. 6, 1992, and went back to the name Revelstoke Review in April 2015, keeping alive a name that goes back to 1914.
The newspaper was purchased by Black Press Community News Media in 2003.
Everything else being printed
Other newspapers have existed throughout the years, notably the Revelstoke Herald published by Clayton Stacey from June 30, 1971, until 1982, in tabloid format.
The first issue had a very rough look, with uneven type-setting and many typos. It improved over the years, and featured columns by David Williams, and cartoons by Stewart Burridge.
Doug Powell published Unique – the Magazine from April 3, 1992, until his death in 1999. It continued to operate for a time with co-owners Priscilla McPherson and Peter Elkington until they sold it to Duane Crandall, publisher of the Golden Star, who ran it as the Revelstoke News until 2003.
Former Times Review editor David Rooney began the Revelstoke Current as an online publication on June 30, 2009. He published it until his death on July 21, 2017.
It was briefly revived in 2018 by Shaun Aquiline but soon after stopped publishing permanently.
Aaron Orlando, another former Times Review editor began publishing Revelstoke Mountaineer as an online news source in January 2015. A monthly print edition with a lifestyle focus was added in May 2016.
Reved Quarterly began publication as a quarterly magazine in 2005, with Heather Lea as the owner.
The early editions were in a newsletter format, mostly focusing on the editor’s travel experiences, but it evolved into a magazine about the community, with stories on local people and activities.
Lea sold it to Peter Worden in 2015, and he took it in a quirky direction, with a mini “quarterly-quarterly” included in each edition.
It has since ceased publication.
Cartoonist Rob Buchanan published his first cartoon in the Times Review on Oct. 10, 1995, and continued to interpret the local news with his sense of humour and his wicked caricatures until 2020.
It was announced recently that Buchanan’s cartoons will return to the Revelstoke Review.
The Glimpses of the Past column that appears in the Revelstoke Review first appeared as early as 1930, without a title.
Over the years, it went by a variety of titles, but the April 6, 1944 issue, it appeared under the title, “Glimpses of the Past,” and that one stuck.
The column continued until the late 1990s, and was recently revived, with Revelstoke Museum and Archives supplying the columns and accompanying photographs.
Most people engage with one or more of the local media offerings, and many have strong opinions about them.
As an historian, I rely on the newspapers to help to tell the story of the community.
The inclusion or exclusion of stories, the bias presented by the author, and the integrity of the information can impact how we understand and present the history of our community.
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@josh_piercey
josh.piercey@revelstokereview.com
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