On the 90th anniversary of the Western Producer and its service to western Canadians and Canadian agriculture in general, I think it is a fitting tribute to recall the marvelous link to literacy that the Young Co-operators page offered rural children.
What phenomenal excitement the evening The Western Producer arrived at our home and it was finally my turn to leaf through the pages. My turn did not always come first. There were pages that Mom wanted to see: page with patterns and recipes. Dad wanted the entire newspaper. The teacher who boarded at our home wanted a sneak peek at the agricultural news.
Read Also
Agriculture ministers agree to AgriStability changes
federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
I wanted the Young Co-operators page and the comics. And we never, but never, divided it nor rumpled the pages.
With great anticipation I finally hunkered down on the kitchen floor and spread wide the newspaper to my chosen pages. With quiet enthusiasm I knelt and devoured every story and poem.
What marvelous joy to read the works of young authors with pennames such as Yellow Daisy, Rovin’ Tom and Twinkling Star as they wrote of My Favorite Colt and Our New Kittens and poems extolling the virtues and beauty of The Milky Way, First Dawn and The Northern Lights.
All of us were familiar with the aurora borealis in those days when there wasn’t much artificial light around: one yard light maybe or even none.
The nighttime horizon was black except for the moon. Of course, the winter landscape in the moonlight made nights brighter but summer nights were black.
My heart leapt with the wonder of identifying with other kindred spirits who loved to write. I imagined that I might someday see something I had written on these pages — pages that gained entrance to nearly every western Canadian home. I would have my story visit there too and I would be famous.
Each week I read and reread the guidelines for submitting to the Young Co-operators pages.
Alas, I always had the conviction that my stories lacked some vital ingredient and therefore were not worthy of Bluebird or the other youth editors for the page choosing to print them.
Basically, I lacked the courage and encouragement from the adult world to submit my stories. Naturally they were never chosen for print as they were never submitted.
However, all was not lost. In 1989, after reading a rather good story, I thought, that my 12-year-old daughter had written, I, now a teacher and an old hand at encouraging others, suggested that she submit the story to the Young Co-operators.
We chose a pen name — I probably as enamoured with the idea as she. I had, in my adult life, begun to write seriously and knew now how to submit articles for publication. Several had been published circa 1978-85 in Western People and other magazines. We sent the package.
Imagine our euphoria when, indeed, her story was printed on the Young Co-operators page. And then to our even greater surprise, a package came in the mail from the editors of the page: a pin, a certificate, a banner, a badge for her jacket, I think, an extra copy of her story, a letter of congratulations. It seemed the contents of that envelope were endless, just because we had taken the step to submit that first story to the Young Co-operators.
I was floored, probably more than she. And saddened, too, that I had never taken the plunge. So much it would have meant to me, a singular writer in a small, one-room country school.
There were lots of isolation factors in that life but none greater than being a writer, for all writers that we studied in those days were surely dead and didn’t really have a face or existence at all.
As a teacher, I went on to encourage any young person I knew who enjoyed writing to submit their works to the Young Co-operators’ page.
I yearned for them to experience the rush of seeing their work in print for the first time, knowing what a phenomenal difference it might make to a struggling, lonely young writer.
The earliest reference I can find for the Young Co-operators page was that Violet McNaughton was the first editor of Mainly for Women and Young Co-operators in The Western Producer circa 1925. These pages she edited until 1950, bringing culinary and literary delight and encouragement to rural prairie women and children.
