100 Years of Publishing in Consort

The cold December day of 1912, proved to be the start of something that continues on today, 100 years later. This issue that you are reading is on the exact 100th anniversary of the start of the Consort Enterprise – December 12th, 1912

– Mary Readman
As the west opened up following the turn of the 20th century, rail lines snaked their way across the prairies and little villages sprung up along these lines. They usually had a hotel or stopping house, cafe, livery barn, blacksmith, general store, hardware, bank, pool room, barber and a weekly newspaper. By the fall of 1912, the steel had reached Consort and on December 12th, 1912, the first copy of The Consort Enterprise was printed.
Henry Oke had brought the printing equipment by flatcar from Foam Lake, Saskatchewan, and it was still on the track when he put out the first edition. It was one sheet, printed both sides, and back when I first started in this business, there were still oldtimers who remembered being on Consort’s Main Street, when Mr. Oke came up town with his printed sheets and distributed them to any and all who were interested. It has always been my regret that we were never able to find one of these copies, but likely back then they were soon used to start the kitchen fire, as no one would have given a second thought to the significance of this event.
Soon, every little town had a weekly paper and we have the copies from when the Monitor weekly was at its hey-day. Travelling was more difficult and phones were just coming in, so to get any news, folks relied on the paper. News from outlying areas was sent in by train or phoned in where possible (24 was the Enterprise number). Then it had to be put up in hand set type, placed in the frame, finally tightened down, placed in the single sheet, hand fed press and copies were printed off.
The ink was much like crude oil, and would run even in cold weather, so Mr. Oke printing in the open air on the flat car, was able to get a satisfactory impression. He would have powered the platen press with foot power, pumping it as he coordinated his hand feeding of the single sheets with his right hand, while operating the clutch with his left hand – and it all had to be synchronized.
Years later, when this same press had been rented by the production company of Jake and the Kid, on Allard Way in Edmonton, I was brought in as an advisor on what an old country weekly would look like. They had taken enough other equipment, type cases, etc. to create an authentic looking room, but once, when I went in, they had papers hanging all over the walls. In typical ‘Mary fashion’, I said ‘What the heck does that represent?’ They said they thought that was how the papers dried. Well, I had to laugh – no such a thing was ever done, and I got them to remove the hanging papers. Even then, some 30 years ago, the art of letterpress was not known anymore by most people, and to top it all, they had tried to train a young fellow who was left handed, and he couldn’t do it at all and was scared of the machine, with the result that they never did show the press running in the T.V. series, although I had demonstrated it for them when I printed the copies for them that I had made up of the “Crocus Breeze” weekly…
Once Mr. Oke had announced his arrival in Consort, he wasted no time in finding a home for the necessary presses, cases of type, a stone and other articles hauled from Foam Lake. By the next edition, December 19, 1912, he was settled in a suitable building and The Consort Enterprise was truly in business.
In November of 1914, Mr. Oke sold the business to Mabel DeWolfe, who became the first woman to operate a weekly newspaper in Alberta. In 1921, her brother, Wilburn, who had assisted her since 1915, took over completely as Mabel wanted to marry Fred Mattoon and start her family.
Wilburn A. DeWolfe ran The Enterprise for the next 29 years and became known as a righteous and God-fearing man who fought drink and debauchery through the columns of his paper. His motto under the masthead was, A Paper With A Mission and Without a Muzzle. He lived up to that credo.
Electric lights were installed in the Enterprise in January of 1926 and in 1935, the paper moved from Main Street to the old Crown Lumber building on Loyalist Avenue and Caroline Street.
On January 9, 1950, Wilburn passed away following 33 years as Editor. His greatest influence on the community came from his sometimes pungent editorials on the evils of liquor, tobacco and lax moral principles. The popular show, “Neighbourly News”, frequently quoted The Enterprise on the radio during his tenure.
On January 23, 1950, I started to hand set type at the Enterprise. The paper was purchased shortly after that by my brother, C.M. (Charlie) Scott, who published his first paper on February 16, 1950.
The paper continued production with hand set type for a few more years until the Linotype was purchased. (The original Linotype, installed in 1928, only lasted until the Depression when it became too costly to operate and was abandoned.) In the fall of 1956, Charlie leased The Enterprise to Arlos and Elsie Tkach (nee DeWolfe, who had worked at the paper in the early 50’s).
In the spring, the Tkachs’ did not want to continue in the business, so Charlie hired me (by this time married and with a little girl) to take over for a few weeks until he could sell it. But buyers were few and far between. As time passed, it became apparent the Readman family was going to have to settle down as Carol would soon need to go to school (Up until this time, we had travelled with the seismic crew where Bill was a driller). So we took over the Enterprise and have been with it since.
In 1964, The Enterprise moved to a new building on the west side of town at Mary and Prospect (52 St.-50 Ave.) Various enlargements have been made to the building and new automatic presses were added. In January of 1980, the paper changed over to the offset method of printing. The Enterprise has become bigger as the community has grown and the list of subscribers is over three times as many as it was in April of 1957. Of the original businesses when the town was first founded, The Enterprise is the only one still operating.
The Readmans saw the paper’s production evolve from setting type, making up pages, casting mats to the more modern Linotype, Compugraphics and finally computers. Bill and I, along with daughter Carol, operated and expanded the paper together until July 4, 1998, when Bill died. Following Bill’s death, Carol’s husband Dave Bruha joined the newspaper.
The Consort Enterprise was among the first newspapers in Canada to embrace the new computer driven technology that was appearing, leaving behind the waxer and paste-up templates in May of 1999 and becoming a  digitally produced product. With computers fully entrenched in the Enterprise office and dust collecting on the equipment of yesteryear, a museum was built in Consort to preserve the history and tools of the newspaper pioneers on the Alberta prairies. The opening of this museum was the culmination of a dream. It is completely equipped with all the machines and materials necessary to print a newspaper by the hot metal process. Some of the equipment to be found in the museum is the original brought from Foam Lake, Saskatchewan in 1912.
Carol and Dave took over the Enterprise on January 1st, 2006, continuing the family tradition of publishing and printing in Consort.

Editor’s Note: Today’s issue, December 12, 2012, will reach about 2,500 people, and will feature 28 pages of news, advertising and Christmas Greetings – with 20 pages in color! It would be impossible for Henry Oke to imagine his one page Consort Enterprise evolving into the newspaper you are holding in your hands today.
As many daily newspapers in the cities are struggling to stay afloat, it is worthy to note that the weekly newspaper industry continues to thrive and grow. Community newspapers have maintained their strong readership numbers and are read by over 80% of adults in Canada. Technology has changed the way The Enterprise does things – computers and digital cameras making the job so much easier – but what we do remains the same, connecting people to what’s happening in the community and maintaining a weekly history of the events that shape our town and our lives.
Here’s to the next 100 years…