New career raised eyebrows
When a high profile person moves into journalism, sometimes the journalist becomes the story.
Back in 1952, John Walter Grant MacEwan tried his hand at being the agriculture editor of The Western Producer.
This was at a time when he had resigned as dean of the faculty of agriculture and home economics at the University of Manitoba to run for the Liberals in the Brandon constituency.
He lost out to Walter Dinsdale and was briefly at loose ends. The Producer’s executive editor, Bill Bradley, prevailed on him to try newspapering.
Read Also
Agriculture needs to prepare for government spending cuts
As government makes necessary cuts to spending, what can be reduced or restructured in the budgets for agriculture?
Grant found himself with three newspaper pages to fill and he was also expected to oversee page design, making decisions about the most important stories and what illustrations to use. This can be a humbling experience if the printers think you are a twit.
Fortunately, they liked Grant and he got a good deal of help.
On his first day he shuffled through the mailed-in news releases.
One release about crop technology caught his eye so he phoned the agrologist who had been quoted.
“Hello, this is Grant MacEwan,” he began.
“Who?” asked the startled crop scientist.
When all had been made clear, Grant asked the man to enlarge on his release.
“Why? Do you feel there is something wrong with it?”
“No, no, I’m just trying to get a story together for the paper.”
Eventually the story materialized but that was one befuddled crop scientist. How come a dean, a person second only to the Angel Gabriel, would be muddling about on a newspaper?
Grant only stayed with us for a few months but had a long happy association as a columnist and author of many books we published.
