Brampton Times & Conservator - reporter
In the fall of 1963, at age 21, it was welcome to Brampton, Rose Capital of Canada, a lacrosse fan's delight, Gage Park, the Thunderbird Inn and an easy-living population of under 30,000.
For the pre-job interview, William "Bill" Doole asked me to sit down at one of the Underwood typewriters and write an off-the-cuff news story about a house fire. My "Dog Saves Family" yarn got me the $32.50-a-week job.
The Brampton Times and Conservator was a Thomson weekly newspaper, located on Queen Street across from Perk's Family Restaurant and a few doors from Murray's, the town's favourite bakery. All departments shared the single-storey building.
Didn't know it at the time, but a distant cousin, William Albert "Bert" Roadhouse, had been a reporter at the Brampton Conservator in the late 1800's, before the merger of the Conservator and the Times. He later became Ontario's minister of agriculture.
Also didn't know that fellow reporter Michael Enright would move on to become a long-time, celebrated CBC Radio show host.
One of my first assignments in Brampton was a man-on-the-street feature and the first question was about birth control. What normally takes about 30 minutes to find, interview and photograph five people, took almost two hours. Few people wanted to talk about birth control. In a nutshell, Brampton was, indeed, conservative.
The camera of choice in 1963 must have been the Grafix because that was what we were using at the Brampton paper. On November 13, 1963, slung the Grafix over my shoulder and stuffed my pockets with bulbs and negative slides and headed to nearby Norval.
It was time to catch up to Rompin' Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, a young rock band I had watched frequently in downtown Toronto nightclubs for the price of a beer. This time, a camera and a press pass cleared the way for photographs and an interview.
Hawkins, then and now, is a reporter's dream when it comes to quotable quotes and going out of his way to pose for pictures with local fans. With him on a small stage that night, were Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Levon Helm. Still have negs from that gig.
embedded in my brain is the exact moment I heard that John Kennedy had been shot. I was at my desk typing a story when the paper's ad salesman walked in the front door and shouted the news. The city editor laughed and continued working on local news stories.
Never knew whether the city editor laughed because she thought the ad salesman was joking, or she thought it amusing that someone would shoot a U.S. president. But she was big on "local" news and Kennedy, on that Nov. 22, 1963, wasn't local news.
Returning home, the trauma of the day continued with hours of television coverage and recording the news on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, which I kept. The story of the decade and reporters at the Brampton Times and Conservator spent it writing local news.
Speaking of local news, while Kiwanis, Rotary and Lions club luncheon and dinner meetings were a good source of nutrition for bachelor reporters, the occasional guest speaker was memorable. Enter William Davis, Brampton's own provincial Tory minister of education and future Ontario premier.
As a guest speaker, Davis would approach local reporters before he spoke and hand them prepared "safe" speeches. Dry stuff, generally. Davis would then stray from the prepared speech and pepper his address with much more interesting commentary. Not knowing better, I went with the prepared speeches thinking that was the way it was done.
My introduction to the word "ecology" was at a public meeting to discuss expansion of Toronto International Airport and increased jet traffic. Tongue-tied, I stood up, fumbled the name of the newspaper, then asked about jet noise. One of the guest speakers thanked me for raising "ecology" issues and talked about airport noise research.
I also covered court cases in the grand old courthouse on Main Street, including juvenile court, with the permission of Judge H.T.G. Andrews. Reporters said the H.T.G. stood for Hard To Get because he was so elusive with the media, but in my books he was always approachable.
After several months of working at the weekly newspaper - and a verbal debate over whether the death of Toronto Mayor Donald Summerville should have been on the front page, instead of inside - Bill Doole thought I should be working for a daily newspaper.
In the spring of 1964, it was off the Woodstock Sentinel Review. But a return to Brampton was in the cards, thanks again to Doole.
Next blog: Woodstock Sentinel Review - reporter
Didn't know it at the time, but a distant cousin, William Albert "Bert" Roadhouse, had been a reporter at the Brampton Conservator in the late 1800's, before the merger of the Conservator and the Times. He later became Ontario's minister of agriculture.
Also didn't know that fellow reporter Michael Enright would move on to become a long-time, celebrated CBC Radio show host.
One of my first assignments in Brampton was a man-on-the-street feature and the first question was about birth control. What normally takes about 30 minutes to find, interview and photograph five people, took almost two hours. Few people wanted to talk about birth control. In a nutshell, Brampton was, indeed, conservative.
The camera of choice in 1963 must have been the Grafix because that was what we were using at the Brampton paper. On November 13, 1963, slung the Grafix over my shoulder and stuffed my pockets with bulbs and negative slides and headed to nearby Norval.
It was time to catch up to Rompin' Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, a young rock band I had watched frequently in downtown Toronto nightclubs for the price of a beer. This time, a camera and a press pass cleared the way for photographs and an interview.
Hawkins, then and now, is a reporter's dream when it comes to quotable quotes and going out of his way to pose for pictures with local fans. With him on a small stage that night, were Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Levon Helm. Still have negs from that gig.
embedded in my brain is the exact moment I heard that John Kennedy had been shot. I was at my desk typing a story when the paper's ad salesman walked in the front door and shouted the news. The city editor laughed and continued working on local news stories.
Never knew whether the city editor laughed because she thought the ad salesman was joking, or she thought it amusing that someone would shoot a U.S. president. But she was big on "local" news and Kennedy, on that Nov. 22, 1963, wasn't local news.
Returning home, the trauma of the day continued with hours of television coverage and recording the news on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, which I kept. The story of the decade and reporters at the Brampton Times and Conservator spent it writing local news.
Speaking of local news, while Kiwanis, Rotary and Lions club luncheon and dinner meetings were a good source of nutrition for bachelor reporters, the occasional guest speaker was memorable. Enter William Davis, Brampton's own provincial Tory minister of education and future Ontario premier.
As a guest speaker, Davis would approach local reporters before he spoke and hand them prepared "safe" speeches. Dry stuff, generally. Davis would then stray from the prepared speech and pepper his address with much more interesting commentary. Not knowing better, I went with the prepared speeches thinking that was the way it was done.
My introduction to the word "ecology" was at a public meeting to discuss expansion of Toronto International Airport and increased jet traffic. Tongue-tied, I stood up, fumbled the name of the newspaper, then asked about jet noise. One of the guest speakers thanked me for raising "ecology" issues and talked about airport noise research.
I also covered court cases in the grand old courthouse on Main Street, including juvenile court, with the permission of Judge H.T.G. Andrews. Reporters said the H.T.G. stood for Hard To Get because he was so elusive with the media, but in my books he was always approachable.
After several months of working at the weekly newspaper - and a verbal debate over whether the death of Toronto Mayor Donald Summerville should have been on the front page, instead of inside - Bill Doole thought I should be working for a daily newspaper.
In the spring of 1964, it was off the Woodstock Sentinel Review. But a return to Brampton was in the cards, thanks again to Doole.
Next blog: Woodstock Sentinel Review - reporter
posted by John Cosway | 6:51 p.m.
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