Tribute to deceased members – May 2019
At the 2019 AGM luncheon Duff Jamison gave a tribute to members that had passed away in 2018. Here is that presentation.
Four former members of the Alberta Weekly Newspapers Association: Howie Bowes, Sig Sigvaldason, Bob Cooke and Jack Tennant passed away in 2018. I knew them all and it’s my honour to pay tribute to them today.
Howie Bowes was a key player in the days that AWNA moved from a volunteer-run association to one with staff and eventually its own office. Born in Moose Jaw in 1931, he gained his first newspaper experience in Ontario before joining his older brothers Bill and Jim at the Grande Prairie Herald Tribune.
Howie left Bowes Publishers in 1965 to purchase the Leduc Representative and launch Lynard Publishers. Howie expanded Lynard over the years adding newspaper titles including: the Spruce Grove Examiner, Stony Plain Reporter, Whitecourt Star, Mayerthorpe Freelancer, Drayton Valley Western Review and Onoway Tribune, all printed at a central printing facility in Leduc. He and his wife Marilyn, the Lynard name contained three letters from each of their names, sold the business to Sun Media in 1989.
We also lost Marilyn a few days ago. Her service was Tuesday in Leduc. Howie and Marilyn had been married 65 years.
Howie got involved with AWNA following his arrival in Leduc and served as President in 1970/71. He also served on the national board, CCNA, for more than 10 years and is an Honourary Life Member of both.
In 1983 Howie was the inaugural recipient of the Bill Draayer award, established and, in those days, presented by Bill to acknowledge an outstanding contribution to the well-being of the association and its members. At the time Bill said of Howie,
“As an active member of the Alberta Weekly Newspapers Association, Howard Bowes has been in the forefront of Association progress for almost 20 years. He was one of the leaders in producing the McDonald Readership Survey which will always be regarded as an awakening to the power and influence of Alberta’s weekly newspapers.
“As chairman of the Advertising and Public Relations Committee of AWNA for several years, Howie was instrumental in convincing his fellow members that they could, and should, employ a sales representative as a prelude to opening a Central Office. To prove the point, he personally tested the climate of the Alberta advertising industry by voluntarily calling on agencies and regional advertisers on behalf of members of the Association”
Now some of you, perhaps most of you, are probably thinking, “haven’t we always had a sales rep?” Well no. We didn’t. But Howie proved it would work. In those days chairing the ad committee also meant making calls, at first in tandem with the executive director, until about the mid-‘80’s when volumes allowed us to make our first hire.
Howie was 87 at the time of his passing June 23, 2018. Marilyn was 86. Howie and Marilyn are survived by their children Brad, Brenda and Lisa.
Jack (‘Sig’) Sigvaldason died August 9, 2018 at 84.
Sig was a regular at the AWNA annual meeting, flying in from the Northwest Territories and ensuring no one would overlook the needs of his northern papers. He was proud of the north and made it a point to teach us about it. He even hosted the first AWNA board meeting held outside of Alberta when we travelled to Yellowknife in 1984.
He was such a character that I could be up here all day telling stories. I will tell you is that he was a newsman to the core.
His long-time editor, now publisher, Bruce Valpy had this to say about him in an article published following Sig’s death in August last year:
“He began his career at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1952. Shortly after, he founded his own advertising firm, Sigvaldason & Associates.
“In the late 60s, his sister married a northern bush pilot and Sig began planning a TV documentary on his brother-in-law’s work. His long love affair with the North began shortly thereafter.
“In 1969, Sigvaldason took a role as editor of News of the North at a time but was fired two years later “for antagonizing the territorial government, the federal government, the municipal government, the Indian Brotherhood, Inuit Tapirisat and the majority of advertisers,”
Sigvaldason then started The Yellowknifer, Yellowknife’s community newspaper, with journalist Jack Adderley. In 1972, he established Northern News Services, later purchasing News of the North the paper that had fired him in 1979 and renaming it News/North.
“[Sig] was on the street. He was in the grocery stores, the coffee shops, the bars, the courtrooms, the government offices,” said Bill Braden, the first journalist on staff at The Yellowknifer. “So he connected so strongly and so passionately with the people in the community.”
“[He] would always take ideas a little further than expected. It was a little frightening at times, but that’s why it was fun to work with him,” said Valpy. “He was a fierce journalist… He loved people stories. He loved community journalism.” – Bruce Valpy, publisher and CEO of NNSL
Sig was awarded AWNA’s Bill Draayer Award in 2012. At the time presenter George Brown noted that as a pioneering, crusading journalist, he had also earned the Canadian Journalism Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award that same year and in 2011, the ISWNE Eugene Cervi Award. By that time, he had been in the journalism business for 60 years. His papers are consistently among the best in the AWNA, SWNA, and CCNA better newspapers competitions.
Sig was never been shy about giving his advice to AWNA directors at an AGM or cornered in an elevator.
Sig worked with Mary Readman for many years on the Write On committee, involving school children in our program that promoted literacy through the creation of classified ads, editorials and stories.
“I think he gave that whole part of the country a unique voice” and mentored “fantastic people” into the industry, said John Hinds, president and CEO of News Media Canada.
“Very few people can say they created an industry in a region. Because of his position he had a pan-Canadian profile. I also think he occupied a unique place in the industry given what he did and how he started the Northern News,” he said.
Sigvaldason had “quite a presence,” said Bill Braden, the paper’s first photographer and former MLA, noting his big beard, big pipe and football player’s build.
“As a journalist, he had a passion for “going after the bureaucracy.
“Government wasn’t a good word, especially for Sig when it came to what government did to the little people. He was a champion of the little guy and the paper would smoulder with cutting editorials,” said Braden.
Sig is survived by his wife Mae, daughter Karen, son-in-law Norman Ball, son John and granddaughters Maya and Megan.
Robert Charles (Bob) Cooke
Bob Cooke was born in Rimbey and lived his whole life in the area. He was and oil and gas guy that came late to the newspaper business when he purchased the Rimbey Record and Eckville Examiner from Jack and Olive Parry in 1985.
As a first-time publisher, Bob immediately got involved with AWNA mostly to learn about the business. He kept his energy consulting business going and would eventually return to it when he sold the papers a few years later to a Vancouver group that had come to Alberta to purchase a bunch of community papers and take them public.
Bob kept a close eye on activities at AWNA, its board of directors and management. He reminded us of a newspaperman’s version of Brad Marchand and might give you an elbow if he caught you with your head down at the AGM. He certainly got to know what a community newspaper should and shouldn’t be during his time on the AWNA Membership Committee. He didn’t concern himself much with hurt feelings if he thought the member paper wasn’t up to snuff. He would let the whole room know it.
Bob passed away at Lacombe, AB on Wednesday, December 12, 2018
He is survived by Helen his wife of 58 years.
Jack Tennant – December 23, 1935 – May 20, 2018
Murray Elliott who was Jack’s partner in Olds and Innisfail paid tribute to him at our June 2018 AGM. I’ll share one story he missed that day:
Although Jack exiled himself from AWNA in his second and third iterations as an Alberta weekly newspaper publisher, Jack was involved in the ‘80’s as owner/publisher of the Airdrie Echo and Rocky View Times. Even then, however, you might have questioned his commitment at times. In the late ‘80’s Jack was our convention chairman. That year we were in Calgary where Jack was a popular Sun columnist and in some demand as a speaker at amateur sports dinner. It might have been the Olympics year. In any case Jack, thinking everything appeared to be in hand, slipped away to an event not long before he was to chair the President’s Dinner. That left us scrambling for a replacement and it may have irritated a few old traditionalists but, we managed to pull it together proving he was probably right all along.
Jack was 82 when he died May 20th last year. He is survived by his wife Brenda, publisher of the Cochrane Eagle and two sons, Alan and Ian.