Oakville Journal Record - reporter

Another stop in the rocky road to a stable newspaper job.

But my three-month stay here, under the thumb of local news legend John Strimas, did give me the opportunity to write my first editorial, a cliched effort to be sure, and to run a news bureau, on my own, in nearby Milton.

Well, it wasn't a physical bureau. My office was a desk, chair and Underwood typewriter in the screened front porch of my second-floor farmhouse flat atop the Halton Hills mountain range. After the stories were written, I would leave them with a fellow staffer in Milton, who commuted to Oakville each day.

Milton, where the local weekly, the Milton Champion, was well-established, was a tough town for daily news. Nothing much happened day to day, so to justify the bureau, you had to be creative and productive day and night.


One of my favourite feature stories in Milton left me with an indelible appreciation of how the hearing impaired learn to cope. It was an afternoon spent at the Ontario School for the Deaf, now known as the Ernest C. Drury School.

(Years later, after befriending a deaf nightclub dancer, I knew from that memorable session with teachers and students in Milton that she could dance to the rhythm of the music by feeling the vibrations in the floor.)

My first and last experience with wakeup pills occurred one busy day in Milton. Exhausted from morning and afternoon stories, I popped a pill that was supposed to keep me awake for an evening assignment. It knocked me out for six hours. Fortunately, my day copy saved my butt.

Being responsible for covering Milton day and night took its toll after three months. The Journal Record was invaluable experience on my path to whatever. I quit, moved back home to Toronto and wondered about my future.

The tally was Chatham, Brampton, Woodstock and Oakville reporting jobs - all within a year. But what I didn't know a year earlier, I knew then. I would be a working reporter again.

In the months that followed, I did odd jobs, including waiter at Fran's restaurants in Toronto, which I had done off and on in the early 1960's, and selling family portraits door to door.

In the late summer of 1964, Sinnott News, a Scarborough company that delivered a wide variety of magazines to corner stores, hired me as an assistant driver/delivery rep.

I had no idea one of the Sinnott delivery routes would eventually take us to a variety store in Brampton, only steps from the Brampton Times and Conservator. A passing reporter stopped to say hello. I slipped him a Playboy magazine and asked him to say hello to Bill Doole for me.

Before leaving, the reporter, with the Playboy tucked under his arm, asked if I knew the paper was going to become a daily newspaper in the spring and they would be hiring. It was music to my ears. A letter and an anxious phone call to Doole had positive results.

I didn't say anything to Sinnott news about my new pending reporting job until weeks later when they asked if I wanted to be trained as a fulltime driver. To be fair, I mentioned my reporting goals and they kept me on as an assistant for a few more weeks.

And then it was the countdown to Day One at the Brampton daily.

Had very positive feelings about working for the new Brampton Daily Times, across from Perk's Family Kitchen and a few doors down from Murray's Bakery.

Next blog: Brampton Daily Times - reporter