AUGUST 27, 1923: The Progressive, a new weekly newspaper for farmers, publishes its first issue, with the slogan “Reliable News – Unfettered Opinions – Western Rights.” Started by war veterans Harris Turner and Patrick Waldron, the Progressive was rushed into print to help support a Prairie-wide drive by farmers to begin pooling their wheat. Pool supporters like the Saskatchewan Grain Growers Association had no friendly daily newspaper in the province, so the SGGA provided a loan of more than $7,000 to launch the Saskatoon-based weekly newspaper.
Since the first copies were issued before the new printing and publishing firm (called The Modern Press Limited) could acquire printing equipment, the newspaper had to come out in smaller tabloid size, the same as today’s Western Producer.
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SEPTEMBER 1923: Three weeks later, with a Comet press in place, The Progressive became a broadsheet. Since it was intended as a counterfoil for daily newspapers, Turner and Waldron wanted to print it broadsheet size, the size used by most dailies.
JUNE 26, 1924: Saskatchewan Wheat Pool directors declare the Pool in operation, with 45,725 contract signers.
SEPTEMBER 1924: To avoid confusion with the Progressive political party, the newspaper changes its name to The Western Producer. In the first year, Producer subscriptions rose to 12,500.
APRIL 9, 1925: Noted farm leader and social activist Violet McNaughton launches a quarter-century as Producer women’s editor with a column entitled “Call to Women Readers.”
JUNE 18, 1925: The Open Forum letters section makes its debut.
AUGUST 1925: By the end of the second year, subscriber numbers have climbed to 20,000 and significant gains are being made in sales in Alberta and Manitoba. But the young newspaper is still small compared with longer-established rivals.
1927: With the help of loans from Saskatchewan Wheat Pool and United Farmers of Canada, Saskatchewan section, a new plant site is obtained on a tax-sale basis on Saskatoon’s Second Avenue and a brick-faced building is constructed.
AUGUST 1928: The paper comes out in tabloid size, the format it uses to this day.
OCTOBER 29, 1929: Stock and commodity prices collapse on “Black Tuesday.” The Western Producer is quickly threatened with bankruptcy because most subscribers were paying by authorizing deduction of their $2 subscription fee from their final grain payments from the Pool. Collapsing wheat prices mean no final payment and no subscription money for the newspaper.
JUNE 11, 1931: To preserve the newspaper, Saskatchewan Wheat Pool assumes ownership of the company in exchange for a promise to deal with its debts.
This is no small risk at a time when the Pool has financial problems of its own. The balance sheet shows The Modern Press Limited had assets of $128,000 and liabilities of $119,000.
With 27,000 unpaid subscriptions out of a total of 31,000, getting the paper back on the rails is a daunting task. Pool country staff and committee members help sell subscriptions. Towns, villages and hamlets hold dances, bazaars and other events to sell subscriptions.
The strain of near-bankruptcy proves too much for Harris Turner, who retires to Victoria but maintains a popular weekly column (Southeast Corner) for the next 26 years. Waldron remains as publisher and editor, with a mandate from the 1931 annual meeting of Pool delegates in the form of a resolution expressing satisfaction with the editorial bent of the past and directing Waldron to maintain the same policies.
SUMMER 1932: There are 48,000 paid subscribers on the roll, but the newspaper still reports a loss of $37,152 in its first year under new ownership.
1936: Circulation passes 100,000. With money short because of depression and drought, however, some subscribers pay in chickens rather than dollars.
WORLD WAR, 1939-45: Grain markets in Europe are cut off by German submarines. Since the war had such a direct impact on western farmers its ebb and flow dominated page one for most of the years 1939-45.
Domestic highlights include a farmers’ march on Ottawa in 1942, and establishment of the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly in 1943.
1948: With prospects for strong peacetime economic growth and hopes of an eventual end to the Producer’s deficits, a new two-storey expansion opens on the north side of the 1927 plant, doubling the size of the printing operation and permitting a brighter, more readable paper.
FALL 1948: The Producer launches a color magazine section with features about western people. Circulation climbs past 160,000. But the newspaper is only No. 4 among the farm press, behind The Family Herald, Country Guide and Free Press Weekly Prairie Farmer.
1957: The Producer magazine prints a
serial, Fifty Mighty Men by J. W. Grant MacEwan. It becomes the best-selling book for Prairie Books when that book-publishing department is launched.
1958: Waldron retires as publisher and editor and is replaced by Tom Robertson Melville-Ness. Melville-Ness switches emphasis from international news to farm policy and farm production.
1969: The Family Herald, a subsidiary of the Montreal Star, ceases publication after an unsuccessful conversion to a glossy feature magazine. The Free Press Weekly buys the Herald’s mailing list, but the cost of sustaining its huge national circulation starts the Winnipeg weekly on the skids also.
1970: The Western Producer establishes its own advertising sales office in Toronto after its former contract representative retires. Other advertising offices open during the next two years in Regina, Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg.
As the Producer makes gains in display and classified advertising as well as subscriptions, the Free Press Weekly Prairie Farmer (later Report on Farming) loses ground. By 1980 it ceases publication.
OCTOBER 1973: Melville-Ness retires and is succeeded by Robert H. D. Phillips, Pool research director. Phillips had worked with Canadian Press, the Regina Leader-Post and United Press International.
Phillips ends the practice of “scalping,” the borrowing of news items from other publications to make a conglomerate story for the Producer. He buys rights to use Reuter News Agency and Christian Science Monitor news, and begins strengthening reporting staff.
NOVEMBER 1977: The Producer moves to a 200-by-200-foot former Massey-Ferguson depot in Saskatoon’s north industrial area. The old plant is sold for almost enough to pay for the larger building and its eight acres of land. An offset printing press is installed.
FEBRUARY 1978: The first staff reporting bureau outside Saskatoon opens in Edmonton. Subsequent ones are established in Ottawa, Winnipeg, Regina and Calgary.
AUGUST 3, 1978: The newspaper launches a magazine supplement, Western People, with pages half the size of a tabloid newspaper.
JUNE 24, 1983: The roof of the Western Producer-Modern Press building collapses under a once-in-a-century hail and rain storm. No one is hurt, but it takes a seven-year lawsuit to establish that the insurance policy covers the cost.
In the meantime, the roof collapse puts the Producer in the red after three successive years of substantial profits. Falling grain prices and a worsening farm economy combine to produce losses in subsequent years.
JANUARY 1, 1987: Phillips retires and the roles of publisher and editor are divided. Business manager Allan Laughland becomes publisher while executive editor Keith Dryden becomes editor. When Dryden retires in 1991, he is succeeded by managing editor Garry Fairbairn.
SEPTEMBER 1, 1988: A major change in company structure occurs when Modern Press becomes part of a partnership with a Regina printing firm. Saskatchewan Wheat Pool retains a major ownership in the new print firm, called M.C. Graphics, but for the first time since 1923, The Western Producer is no longer part of the same company as the printing operation. Western Producer Publications and M.C. Graphics continue to operate out of the same building and the newspaper continues to be printed there.
SEPTEMBER 19, 1988: The Western Producer changes its page-one nameplate for the first time in three decades. A redesign brings more color photos and easier-to-read type.
FALL 1989: The Western Producer jumps onto the leading edge of newspaper technology, installing a desktop computer system that allows editors to design pages onscreen. Over the next few years this rapidly evolves into a computer system capable of sophisticated color processing.
DECEMBER 1990: Canada Post announces plans to slash newspaper postal subsidies, threatening the Producer with a sudden, disastrous 700-percent increase in postal costs. Eventually, after protests by Producer readers, a compromise is offered under which the reduction in subsidy will be phased in.
OCTOBER 25, 1990: A strike at M. C. Graphics prevents publication of The Western Producer, the first time in the newspaper’s history that a scheduled issue is missed. (In 1958 during a printers’ strike, however, the newspaper one week consisted of only a four-page typewritten summary of news.)
AUGUST 1991: Recession brings painful cuts at Western Producer Publications. Continued losses in Prairie Books and elimination of Canada Council grants leads to closure of Western Producer Prairie Books, whose assets are sold to Douglas and McIntyre in Vancouver.
Mergers and cutbacks among advertisers and continuing decline in farm numbers cut heavily into newspaper revenue. The much-beloved Western People magazine loses its distinctive “little magazine” format and becomes the centre part of the newspaper to save printing costs. The Edmonton editorial and advertising bureaus close and Ottawa bureau staff is cut to one from two.
JULY 1992: After a year of efforts to cut costs and boost revenue, the Producer winds up with a modest profit, ending a long string of losses and starting a continuing succession of healthy net earnings.
JUNE 1993: Circulation slips under 100,000 as farm population continues to decline and as fewer non-farmers subscribe to the Producer. Other farm publications are also losing subscribers, and the Producer consolidates its position as having the largest paid circulation among Western Canadian farmers. Total readership is estimated at almost 250,000.
SEPTEMBER 15, 1994: A new supplement, Western Livestock Producer, appears. Over the next few years it becomes a regular quarterly supplement and is joined by supplements on canola, specialty livestock, and farm computers.
JANUARY 1995: With financial improvement and new printing techniques, the newspaper is able to restore its Western
People supplement to the popular “little magazine” format. Later that year, the
network of staff reporters expands with the opening of a Camrose office (and in 1997,
a Brandon office).
Declining membership, however, brings an end to the venerable “Young Co-operators” club in January 1995, as the new “KidSpin” features for youth make their debut.
AUGUST 1995: The Western Producer opens a World Wide Web site, featuring Canada’s largest farm classifieds.
JANUARY 1997: Separate Alberta-B.C. and Saskatchewan-Manitoba editions are launched. Both editions have the same stories, but placement and photos differ so that news of more interest to one area is more prominent in that edition.
The same month, the Western Producer Census of Agriculture is launched. It draws responses from 23,000 farmers, making it one of the most comprehensive agricultural surveys ever undertaken in Canada.
NOVEMBER 27, 1997: For only the
second time in its history, the Producer misses a scheduled issue. Because of a national postal strike, no issue is printed this week.
