MUSKOKA TODAY CELEBRATES 25 YEARS AS ‘ALTERNATIVE PRESS’

Mark Clairmont Owner/Publisher | MuskokaTODAY.com

MUSKOKA — News Flash! Muskoka gets new magazine.

That’s how my dad, Hugh, and I announced Muskoka TODAY, ‘An Alternative Press’ News Magazine that we launched 25 years ago this long weekend, Thursday, May 20, 1994.

And from our ambitious and humble beginnings in print we’ve also been on line, with pdf pages of each bi-weekly edition since that great beginning.

Today we post stories by the minute, as fast as they happen — and we can verify the facts.

That’s the fourth state and the evolution of the sixth state — social media — as we look ahead with pride and hope.

It’s been a way of life for three generations of Clairmonts for more than a century of reporting in, on and about Muskoka, based in Gravenhurst.

My grandfather, E.W. Clairmont, was a columnist for the old Globe newspaper in Toronto, before it merged and became the Globe and Mail.

My dad and I were both stringers for all the Toronto papers from the 1940s through to today. He was the Banner editor in the 1950s and ’60s; and I was once the editor of the Gravenhurst News.

Now I edit the Toronto Star (among close to 100 papers Canada-wide). And after 50 years in the newspaper game myself at home, around the GTA and in Western Canada (including the Edmonton Sun), I am nearing semi-retirement soon when it will be close to 33 years working in Hamilton and now with Torstar.

In 1994, with a lot of local support, our family mounted an alternative to the other weekly district papers, which improved the local press world to the greater benefit of all readers.

Often imitated — but never equalled — by the other media, we have made a name for ourselves that stands out above the others in the competitive field of Muskoka and Central Ontario journalism.

It’s been interesting, challenging, fun and rewarding covering your stories of agony and ecstasy.

“We’ve worked our asses off” to get where we are, to quote Hugh.

We thank you for your faith in us telling your stories.

Ted Currie wrote in his Vol. 1 No. 1 Hometown Advantage column that we were “in the first inning” then.

Well, if so, we’re well in to extra innings — which by that count Vol. 25 puts us in to our 16^th extra inning.

And the game is long from over.

Which is a nice segue in to that first issue, featuring Toronto Blue Jays star Bob Bailor on colour cover. He was a first baseman, which appropriately means we had a hit and made it to first on our first time up to bat.

My dad was a huge baseball fan from his childhood days listening on radio, at his Bay Street home, to the Boys of Summer coming across the airwaves from distant American ballparks.

When the Jays came to Toronto April 7, 1977, he and I were there from the opening pitch. My dad sporting a big buffalo coat in the snowstorm. And he struck up a friendship with Bailor who loved to fish.

Between games Bailor and some other Jays would often come to Gravenhurst and my dad would hook him up with a fishing guide — then share their catch of pan-fried beer-battered bass prepared by my mother, Maisie, in our backyard.

It was a great cover story — and just the type Muskoka TODAY became renowned for as our reputation spread within and beyond Muskoka.

The World of Hugh Clairmont was back and TODAY was like father-like son.

‘Are we crazy — or what?’ blasted the headline on Page 2, From the Publisher, as he attempted to explain our rationale when the field was already crowded with weeklies and summer freebies.

‘They said Gord Sloan was crazy, too,’ he said of his old friend. And you know that story, Hugh often recounted.

My dad was never shy. Not as a local Second World War reporter by day; and popular and successful musician by night.

When there were already three papers in the Gateway town (Gravenhurst News, Banner, briefly the Leader) he was an editorial force (‘Monty Clair’) behind a cheeky one-off April Fools Day publication called ‘The Gravenhurst Banlea.’

But I digress. Muskoka TODAY’s first edition began with news that neighbours around the Beaver Creek prison were alarmed that they weren’t notified of an escape. Big news when two years earlier Phillipe Clement walked away from Gravenhurst’s minimum security prison and brutally assaulted a local woman in town.

‘What went wrong?’ screamed our headline, in true tabloid fashion.

Columnist Richard Corcelli waxed eloquently on ‘Why Wal-Mart’s not coming.’

Bala correspondent Jack Hutton wished us well, but thought we’d ‘Better invest in a Ouija board.’

Hugh McKenzie, who once ran the Huntsville Forester (after both my father and I worked there at different times) was more encouraging, writing my dad to say he was happy and impressed that that other Hugh would start a paper — at his age (68).

My dad was the brains, I was the muscle in this equal family business partnership.

We worked great together, with a lot of help, from including Betty Latham in production and Norm Garbutt delivering that first edition to a couple of dozen news outlets that sold the first paper in Muskoka to retail for a buck.

No mere pocket change was our product.

Bob Sander wrote about Blue Rodeo and an April Wine reunion at the Kee.

Over the years we’ve had dozens of columnists, who I will tell you more about in my regular 25^th anniversary year column. Some of them were national columns.

Among them was Bill Reddall, who died this spring.

I can’t also forget Frank Johnson’s great editorial cartoons that hit the mark off the top: ‘On the Mark, get set go!’

However, I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention Maisie’s Kitchen, which became must reading for shoppers preparing weekend meals, and a column my mother would write until her death a decade ago this past Mother’s Day weekend.

But first, a little more on our ’94 debut.

Dunn’s Pavilion was a favourite haunt of my dad’s and he wrote the first of many feature columns on another of his musical friends and the Bala Big Band promoter.

He also wrote ‘Bala woman becomes priest.’

Our editorials began with ‘Don’t box us in: Give us a break Sam,’ another incursion in to Wal-Mart’s Muskoka overtures.

Below that a bolder editorial shouted ‘Let the Bastards Freeze,’ about Alberta’s “rude and crude” comment regarding shutting off the gas pipelines to the east. (Some things never change.)

We did a lot of name-dropping in those days — all highlighted in black print — mostly about people you knew or we knew you should know about. ‘Snowbirds return from winter in sunny south — with suntans,’ was another headline.

‘Boaters fear user fees at Port Carling Locks;’ and a new state of the art sewer plant ‘Royal Flush,’ were other news grabbers that would generate plenty of click bait today.

Fairly standard fare for small town newspapers, those roots we wanted to keep while adding some new flare to the news.

In more than two dozen years over three decades we’ve strived to be our best and the best, most reliable news organization we could be, even if not the paper of record.

We’ve had our share of summer publications, like the Lake MuskokaTODAY and a ‘Coming Events’ standalone edition called the Treasury, which was the for-runner of many emulators today; in addition to a Christmas Wishbook and a glossy magazine on the opening of the Muskoka Wharf.

Our outstanding coverage of G8 in 2010, and Little Norway and the visit of King Olaf and Queen Sofia were award-winning, even if we didn’t receive a much-deserved press award. But everyone told us so. And we sold thousands of copies that week.

We’ve even influenced elections, but more on that later.

It’s because, as the old IGA, one of our initial advertisers, liked to say: ‘We’re Hometown Proud.’

Of course we couldn’t have done it without all our advertisers’ support, including the likes of Greavette’s Pontiac-Buick, Knapp’s, Gravenhurst Pharmacy, Fowler, Birch Hollow and Cavill’s Funeral Home (who are all also still in business) who joined us a quarter of a century ago this weekend.

A lot of that credit goes to my long-time partner (and love) Lois Cooper, who came on board as a columnist recruited by my dad. She was running the Train Station at the time.

But not only did her acerbic writing win us readers, but she took the business reins and turned us around, too; for which she was named Business Woman of the Year once.

And she championed our online coverage, as well as through our transition to fulltime online in 2010 – and our switch to MuskokaTODAY.com.

And to this day she is our IT expert and CFO.

Another great story among thousands of people and events we’ve been privileged to cover, write about, share and help promote.

It’s an odyssey I wouldn’t want to have missed. And I didn’t.

Thanks for the opportunity. We look forward to more of your stories.

Whether floods, tornadoes, a coming election or new business opening, MuskokaTODAY will be there online and on time.

Because ‘local NEWS means the WORLD to us ….’

Have a look and listen on YouTube as we turn the pages back on our first issue and here Hugh offer a few words about this life of ours. You may want to turn up the volume on your computer to here him.