For the next year, this column will mark The Western Producer’s 100th anniversary by taking a deep dive every week into a past issue of the paper.
I have been waiting for two things ever since I began making my way through back issues of The Western Producer, and they both happened in the Nov. 29, 1951, issue.
One was the appearance of an actual photo on the front page. Up till then, front pages either had one to three headshots or no art at all.
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The photo in this issue was from the Grey Cup, which was held in Toronto and featured the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the Ottawa Rough Riders. Ottawa won 21-14.
The more momentous event, however, was Roy Rogers’ appearance in the colour comics section.
This is important because ever since I started working at the Producer, my father has talked about reading Roy Rogers comics in the paper when he grew up on a farm north of Morse, Sask., in the 1950s.
It was the first thing he would look at when he got home from school on Western Producer days. The stories were serialized, running over several weeks, and my dad would cut out each week’s strip, collect them until the story was complete, and then read them over and over again.
I have been waiting to write about that since I began this project.
The issue was the first time I have seen any colour used in the paper, and the editors appeared to have quickly succumbed to the temptation that has led many a newspaperperson astray over the years: the abomination of colour headlines. Two of them on the front page were red, but I can’t throw too many stones because we were still doing that when I started here.
The big agricultural news of the week was a referendum in Manitoba to see whether farmers wanted to keep marketing oats and barley through the Canadian Wheat Board.
Approximately 34,000 producers braved “bitter weather” to cast their ballots, and 89 percent of them voted in favour of keeping coarse grains in the CWB.
Premier D.L. Campbell was happy with the result.
“This is what the government hoped and asked for and I would like to sincerely thank all voters for this encouraging demonstration of public responsibility.”
