Chatham Daily News - cub reporter

Three eventful and enlightening years as a Globe and Mail copy boy had come to an end, or so I thought. It was off to Chatham, Ontario, a small friendly town not far from the Windsor/Detroit border.

Within minutes of walking into the Chatham Daily News in the summer of 1963 for my first day as a cub reporter, the city editor handed me a heavy Grafix camera, a pile of negative plates and a pocketful of flash bulbs.

"Go take some photographs," he said, leaving what was to be photographed up to me.

In this age of palm-sized digital cameras, the Grafix was the opposite - a cumbersome challenge. Snap a 4x4 photo, pull out the plate, flip it over, slide it back in, put in a fresh flash bulb, take another photo, pocket that slide and used bulb and repeat the process.

For my first on-the-job photo experience, snapped the exterior of the Chatham Daily News (apparently it hasn't changed in 40 years), some street scenes etc. What followed was a crash course in developing the film in the newspaper's small darkroom. Still have those first negatives.

There is something about being in your early 20's and eager to learn. Money and hours on the job didn't matter when you worked for smalltown Thomson newspapers. No unions to dictate what reporters could or couldn't do, so we did it all and appreciated the training.

The important thing for Chatham Daily News reporters was the tavern next door, where we wound down after our 10 to 12-hour days. Plus the Rotary and Lions Club dinner meetings we covered to get a decent meal at least once a week.

One of my first assignments was to interview a local minister about his work in the community. He was quite liberal. In fact, within minutes he was talking about pornographic films and how he endorsed screening them for young people to illustrate how Satan works.

Holy Hearst, I thought, this is going to be a fascinating job. Within the year, the talkative reverend was involved in a widely-reported sex scandal and was all but banished from the community.

Chatham officials were very youth-oriented but in a more positive direction than the wayward minister. There were several arenas, an outdoor community swimming pool and an activity centre to keep teens in the small community occupied.

And there was rock and roll, at pool parties and at Chatham Memorial Community Centre.

The young, blind black performer sitting next to me on a small bench inside the arena for an interview had just turned 11. Many of the 1,200 excited young fans surrounded us and expressed their love for his music and took pictures. He was talkative and agreeable to posing with fans for photos.

That was how Little Stevie Wonder, a wonder boy from Motown Detroit, spent the 20-minute intermission at his soldout Canadian debut. It was the launch of a Canadian tour and more than 40 years later, he is a music icon. My first celebrity encounter, but not the last.

For a small town, this green cub reporter was loving the assignments and the community, but I felt a need to learn more about newspaper style and gain some more confidence. Fortunately, after three months in Chatham, the Globe and Mail allowed me to return to my copy boy job.

In a touch of irony, the reporter who replaced me at the Chatham Daily News was killed in a train crash while driving to a house fire.

In the fall of 1963, after much more guidance from helpful Globe staffers and a couple of news assignments that got published, Robert Turnbull again got me a job at a Thomson newspaper - the weekly Brampton Times and Conservator, with William "Bill" Doole at the helm.

Brampton would be an education for me on many fronts, one involving "local" news guidelines and The Beatles.

Next blog: Brampton Times and Conservator