THESE WHO ALSO SERVE: HAILING HUMBLE ‘COUNTRY CORRESPONDENTS’ THEN, NOW. ‘LOCAL JOURNALISM’ STILL AT ITS IMPORTANT, UNHERALDED BEST

MuskokaTODAY.com ARCHIVES

Ed. note: Town archivist Jack Cline found this decades old piece in our files from former MuskokaTODAY.com owner/publisher, Hugh Clairmont, who celebrated the to oft-times unheralded work of Local Journalism scribes on the daily rural beat. It’s from a 1950 Toronto Star piece, among many clippings he kept on in a scrap book about writing and journalism. He said newspapers were  his education and stories their his textbooks. It harkens back to Alf Dass in Gravenhurst, the Boyers in Bracebridge and Rices in Huntsville. And to us today.

The other day a man of 88 who had been a newspaper correspondent for 62 years finally found it necessary to turn over his duties to a younger reporter.

Not many people will recognize the name of “Bob” Edwards, of Traverston.

In fact Traverston itself is not well known. It is a little village near Markdale (southwest of Collingwood) where, in the early days, John Travers built saw and flour mills and had a store and post-office; the latter disappearing, with the advent of rural mail delivery.

Mr. Edwards has been what is known as a “country correspondent.”

He wrote for the Durham Chronicle, a weekly paper. That paper has in its possession a picture of all its correspondents taken in 1890, and Mr. Edwards, who was wearing a starched collar, a dapper suit with a heavy gold watch chain across the vest, is the only survivor of the 11 persons in the photograph.
The great record of this fine old man, writing paragraphs for his paper for more than three score years, draws attention to “country correspondents” as a class.

They are numerous in Ontario. They record the little happenings (and occasionally the big) within the areas where they live.

Big happenings are not frequent, but there are always the visitings and the church news and the births, marriages and deaths-after all, what events are more important than these three?

The country correspondent holds up a kindly mirror to village life; kindly, because he does not tell all he knows.

Sometimes he is she — Mr. Edwards’ daughter-in-law will carry on.
Why not a cheer or two for these recorders of humble happenings who give their readers a type of news, which the larger papers cannot provide?

Their items are eagerly scanned by past and present residents of their villages.

They are themselves unknown to fame, but week after week they perform their service faithfully, and with, usually, malice towards none.

Local scribes have long lingered over the typewriter looking for just the right word to describe community activities, like Hugh Clairmont here did in Huntsville when he was editor of the Forester from 1964-69. He followed in the steps of his father, Walter, a Toronto Globe columnist before him. PHOTO Clairmont Family Collection Archives
At MuskokaTODAY from 1994-97 Clairmont continued his Local Journalism career covering Muskoka from before the Second World War until his death Christmas Day 1997. With little change, but colour photos and computers.
Before the Forester, Clairmont was editor of the Gravenhurst Banner after the Second World War here with owner Alf Dass, brother-in-law Alex MacDonald and Reg Cator typesetters and printers above what today is Pizza Pizza.
After the Forester he was lured back home to the new Gravenhurst News in 1969 as editor.

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