So, 2024 is over. It is, however, not the first year to have come to an end in this town and district of Golden, B.C. If you were living here in January of ’43, and you may have been, in fact, I think that several people who live here now were very much living here then as well.
A copy of the December 31, 1942 issue of the Golden Star happened to surface on one of my shelves lately and, especially considering the time of year, I couldn’t help but read it. And before I tell you what was in it, let me tell you a bit about the paper itself.
First of all, it was 8 pages in total, but the pages were double the size that most small-town papers are now. The paper was printed here in town on a press that is now at the museum, and of the eight pages, six of them were printed before the paper arrived in Golden. Only the front and back pages were printed locally. Obviously then, the six centre pages were not local news, and in 1942 almost all six of those contained World War II war stories. So the local publisher would write the local stories and set those in type, letter by letter, along with the stories that came in from neighbouring communities.
And speaking of neighbouring communities, the Golden Star was the hometown paper for Golden, Field and every small community as far as Invermere. Invermere, in fact, had more news in the paper than Golden did in the December 31st issue. Each small town had a correspondent who wrote the stories and would have probably forwarded them by mail to the Star. Mail between valley points in those days was considered ‘way mail’ and was carried by the mail truck drivers in the front seat of the truck and dropped off at the respective post offices. So when the driver picked up the mail for example, in Brisco, he (there were no lady mail truck drivers in those days) would have picked up two bunches of mail; a bag for all distant points which would have gone to Golden, and then, mostly likely, a small amount going to the towns between Brisco and Golden, which he would drop off at each post office as he passed through them on his way back to Golden.
Much of the news from each community had to do with residents’ and visitors comings and goings. Trips back and forth to Cranbrook, Calgary, and Vancouver provided most of the news, especially at Christmas time, and particularly during wartime with many military service people coming home for the holiday.
And what would make a newspaper be more of a small-town family newspaper than a Christmas Day wedding story on the front page? Rose Lotosky married Richard Sullivan on that day in ’42 and the paper had a lovely story right at the top of the front page. “The bride, who entered the church on the arm of her father, looked charming in a gown of white sheer chiffon with matching accessories.” “She was attended by her sister, Miss Anne Lotosky, attired in a …..” The article concluded with “The happy couple will make their home at Field.”
Now while I can tell you that I wasn’t around to read that story on the last day of ’42, I can tell you that every paper in Western Canada printed wedding stories. It was a nice journalistic tradition which has long since disappeared. It should be restarted.
But all the news in Golden in ’42 wasn’t good news. Some were tragic, very tragic. One man was taken into custody for murdering his wife at the Golden CPR station on December 19 of that year, not long prior to the printing of the paper that I am telling you about. A few months later he was convicted and sentenced to five years on a reduced charge of manslaughter, partly because of some mental health issues.
Then, presumably, to play a responsible role in keeping the town up to date on utility services, the paper also published the ‘Electric Light Signals.’ This must have been the electricity company’s way of communicating with the community. They would obviously turn the power off in short spurts in order to send messages to everyone and the paper probably published the code every so often. 2 flashes indicated the lights were going out, 3 flashes called the utility staff to the powerhouse, 4 flashes was a call to the police and 5 flashes indicated a fire alarm. But the best one they saved till last – 1 flash indicates the lights are okay again. This story may be more interesting to me than it is to you because I remember the first phones that we had when I was in high school in the ’50s. The rural phones were all party lines and each had a letter as part of the number the letters had a ring combination and when your ring combination rang, you answered the phone. When it was another combination, you didn’t answer, but you knew whose ring it was and if they had, for example, an ad in the paper trying to sell a car, lots of calls for them meant that they were getting lots of action on their ad!
And I love the ‘Business Notices’ section. It has eight items. Numbers 4, 6 and 8 say the same thing – ‘Be sure and ask for Local Creamery Butter.’ It looks like just a little mundane jumble of words, but I think there was a story of valley progress behind them. At the time there were several small dairies in this area, but at first, they didn’t have a creamery to process the milk after it left the farm. Finally, they cooperatively arranged for a creamery and the paper was trying to encourage local consumers to support the dairy so it used some of its unused space to plug the creamery, thereby supporting local farmers.
Interestingly enough, on the back page of the December 31 issue is a story entitled ‘Energy from the Sun.’ The concluding paragraph says ‘It may be that future generations will have at their disposal a wealth of power which will dwarf our present output from waterpower, oil and coal…’ It hasn’t gotten there yet, but it’s interesting that they were talking about it way back then!
So thanks for reading the Star for another year. The issue that we just looked at, from December 31, 1942, was printed almost exactly 82 years ago. I wonder if anyone will look at this issue, published on January 9, 2025. If they do so in 82 years from now it will be the year 2107. That sounds like a long way away, and it is, but no further than 2025 is from 1942.
Duane Crandall is a retired newspaper publisher, having owned and operated The Golden Star from 1982 – 1987, and the Golden News from 1992 – 2003. He served as MLA for Columbia River-Revelstoke from 1986 – 1991. He can be reached at duane8551@eastlink.ca
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