History uncensored is more than some can take
Working from my cluttered, Dickens-like home office here in Gravenhurst, I seem to have a fair amount of time to reminisce about how it all began. How this writing affliction came about in the first place. How in the world I got caught up by this obsessive mission to keep notes for future posterity. What is it that commands me to this keyboard every day, whether I’m up to a writing jag or not? I keep threatening my adversaries that with all this time-flexibility, one day soon I’m going to pen a tell-all book about the local power elite, and their shenanigans dating back to my early reporting forays into their magic world. I just might. I don’t think it would make a best seller by any means but it might curtail some of the big-wheeling, cavalier, “screw-you” movers and shakers free-ranging here in Muskoka.
Back in the days when I worked for the local press, I had a fairly limited editorial capability. I had a beggar of a time doing my job, conscientiously, telling the news, and giving honest, well researched opinion while at the same time making sure it didn’t offend the multitude of VIP’s, their friends, the political honor guard and the local clubs and institutions that might be angered…… if as they say, the editor colored outside the line. I did it all the time just to see if they were paying attention. I snuck quite a large number of stories through just before the crunch of press time, when my overseers had ducked out early for a normal dinner hour in a comfortable setting. Editorial staff and layout artists had to stay frequently to nine or ten on a press night and on a few miserable occasions until midnight. Seeing as I was boss and I couldn’t resist the temptation to exercise true freedom of the press, I’d often find a little extra room for a story that might not have made the flats in preparation, earlier in the production day. Management was known to “pull” a story because of some disruption it might cause in the community, or some chagrin it could bestow upon a faithful advertiser……one looking for any reason to hate our publication or score an ad for free on account of hurt feelings. I got tired writing to suit the wants of so many. I put my job on the line a thousand different times because I adamantly believed inclusion of a particular, maybe controversial story, deserved the light of community-wide readership. By golly that meant for some interesting press mornings with a lot of tell-tale whining, door slamming and statements in anger that usually started like, “I can not believe you ran that story Currie! I oughta fire you right now!”
I’ve been out of the day to day operation of local newspapers since the early 1990’s, and it’s taken quite a few years of contemplation and reflection to appreciate just how much fun it was dodging and darting through the management’s many advisories, and ever-changing, hour by hour protocol. What kind of stories should we run in the community press, and what stories should wind up on the paste-up room floor ….,or on the bottom of the publisher’s shoe?
I had the privilege of working with some exceptionally talented writers who were miles ahead of me in capability. Each of my staff members was highly skilled in research and story development, and when they composed a piece, well, it was pretty much an editor’s delight. Few errors if any, and so well composed that I felt guilty getting a paycheck for pretending to edit. They did however, ride me pretty hard about challenging authority, a more latent skill I’ve honed in the past decade. I was the go-between on many stories, and feature article proposals, trying to seek approval of management to provide space for what might bring a tad more response from readership than the usual two or three letters a week. I loved representing their work but despised the mountain climbing it took, to sell an idea especially if it got too close to a sacred, sensitive wing of the community, they were bent on protecting.
Here’s an example. When I got a new reporter there was always that period of adjustment, which always seemed more for our paper because we needed first of all, to explain the pillars of local society we had to respect….the people we had to please and businesses that needed to be stroked constantly. I hated myself for these start-up tutorials but they could see by the twinkle of a rogue’s eye, I didn’t always follow the rules as set down by the big cheese. On one occasion I was asked to edit through this chap’s critique of a play he had attended, put on by a local summer theatre. It was handed to me by management with the request I provide a little attitude adjustment to the rookie scribe. He had been absolutely ruthless in his review, enough to make any director cry, any performer quit the profession. I had previewed the production myself and his reference to it being parallel to a “rail disaster,” with “toxic fuels leaking out,” was pretty much how I would have written it….with a few compliments sprinkled in just to hang onto that contract ad. He was bang on most of the way through the article but we in the community press (during my years) never used words like “awful” and “of little talent,” to describe a performance by one of our major summer season advertisers. Now put yourself in my shoes, and imagine what it was like trying to tell a high ranking university graduate, in journalism, why he had to give a somewhat more pleasing, encouraging review…..or he might lose his pay envelope. “If they pull their ad contract, they (management) will pull you,” I explained.
Just before you judge us as sell outs to truth and honesty, we always found a way around management protocol. In fact, because I worked with some fine writers with great futures ahead, we simply wordsmithed our way through each week. We got so good at using positives as sarcasm, and writing honestly with subliminal messages that nobody knew at first reading, just how we felt about a particular performance, theatre or musicale, because it was so damn positive and light-hearted. Of course we had a number of intellects out there who let us know they appreciated our sly methodology of slipping a negative review into a smooth silk jacket. While the backers of the show, sponsors and actors thanked us frequently for our enlightening reviews, those who saw through the veil of flamboyance found clear evidence we hated the production, and could offer no reason whatsoever why any one would wish to attend.
I did this for eleven years. It was a laugh beating management’s protocol simply by being half-arse intelligent. Imagine how it must have felt to be sent out to do a business promotion (always in return for an advertising buck), interviewing some guy with one foot on a banana peal (business in the pooper), telling me about the great comeback he’s making. “Business is good,” he’d say, looking to make sure I was writing it down in my note pad. I can’t tell you how many times I was the last bloke (who gave any appearance of being a potential customer) in their business before it folded. I was the “management –forced-me-to-interview-you guy,” with the notepad soon to be filled with amusing anecdotes and doodling.
The problem I’ve carried further into my life’s work as an historian, is this century old (or more) habit of the community press and hobby historical types, rounding off fact to suit the requirements of the audience. We used to call it the “good times were had by all,” standard of operation, and it really screws us historians up today, trying to figure out what actually did happen, and what was the honest impact of a significant event. What angers me the most is that this “good news” pre-occupation to please advertisers is still a hale and hardy reality in the local media. I have to keep reminding myself I was part of the problem for quite a few years, being worried about offending the world around me who apparently all signed my paycheck.
In some ways I suppose, I have become in this sense, an historical revisionist simply by necessity. A lot of details of local history were smoothed and withheld for a wide variety of reasons, and there is no question there are miles between what has been recorded in newspapers and many early books, and the accurate descriptions of a particular event or tragic situation. I can find many occasions when news was sanitized, censored or omitted entirely because it was decided by the publisher at the time, to be too controversial or revealing for the good of the community. For example, there are many sources for the keen historian, to find out more about the appalling poverty and death due to starvation that occurred in Muskoka for decades, without any serious recognition at the time by the local press. Was it lesser news than details of the agricultural society meeting or town council minutes( which by the way always got lots of column space)? By using dozens of sources one finds out fairly soon into research that death by malnutrition was fairly regular from the early homestead days of the late 1800’s into the 1930’s (and to a lesser degree after this). I have read numerous privately published pieces and journals that draw attention to this period of suffering, amidst the pomp and circumstance, the elegance and extravagance of Muskoka’s famous resorts. You’ll find out a great deal of information about the resorts but not about the inherent suffering trying to eke out a living on a Muskoka farmstead.
Each year for about the past decade, I have helped three or four university students annually working on research projects regarding some aspect of Muskoka’s history. And each time I blow their minds by refuting much of what they believe to be the truth about the settlement of the region, and the true economic picture as it was characterized by some historians determined to put our region in the best possible light…..forever. Here I come and rain on the parade. Can’t help it! While I do confess to the positive reinforcement of some articles to please the audience back in my non-glory reporting days, I’m sworn off down-playing anything I happen upon. If you’ve heard that I’m a stickler for detail and a disturber of epic proportion, it comes from those who adamantly believe that you should never let “truth get in the way of a truly good story.” I’m tired of truly good stories and far more interested in seeking out the truth from what fiction is presented. There’s a ton of it to go through but I’m far more patient these days. Now that I work for myself.
I have considerable knowledge about the trials and tribulations that occurred in Muskoka from the 1850’s to the present, and it bothers a few of my contemporaries that the cork might indeed be out of the bottle. Simply stated, I don’t cover up or censor historical fact to please any one at any time, and when I’m asked to assist on a research project, or to advise about a particular time or struggle in history, I have nary a reason to harmonize any information for consistency’s sake, to make a sad tale seem inspirational.
I have become a watchdog today for those who interpret history by their own standard of misinformation. I make notes for posterity. I have confronted many hardcore revisionists recently, making real news read like poetry, and the reception hasn’t been all that welcoming.
So fire me!
I will never misrepresent historical fact. I will never admit to being perfect and I will correct any error so that it does not become an historical obstacle to researchers who follow me.
Thanks for taking the time to read this January 2007 blog editorial. Please read my other blog www.thenatureofmuskoka.blogspot.com
Working from my cluttered, Dickens-like home office here in Gravenhurst, I seem to have a fair amount of time to reminisce about how it all began. How this writing affliction came about in the first place. How in the world I got caught up by this obsessive mission to keep notes for future posterity. What is it that commands me to this keyboard every day, whether I’m up to a writing jag or not? I keep threatening my adversaries that with all this time-flexibility, one day soon I’m going to pen a tell-all book about the local power elite, and their shenanigans dating back to my early reporting forays into their magic world. I just might. I don’t think it would make a best seller by any means but it might curtail some of the big-wheeling, cavalier, “screw-you” movers and shakers free-ranging here in Muskoka.
Back in the days when I worked for the local press, I had a fairly limited editorial capability. I had a beggar of a time doing my job, conscientiously, telling the news, and giving honest, well researched opinion while at the same time making sure it didn’t offend the multitude of VIP’s, their friends, the political honor guard and the local clubs and institutions that might be angered…… if as they say, the editor colored outside the line. I did it all the time just to see if they were paying attention. I snuck quite a large number of stories through just before the crunch of press time, when my overseers had ducked out early for a normal dinner hour in a comfortable setting. Editorial staff and layout artists had to stay frequently to nine or ten on a press night and on a few miserable occasions until midnight. Seeing as I was boss and I couldn’t resist the temptation to exercise true freedom of the press, I’d often find a little extra room for a story that might not have made the flats in preparation, earlier in the production day. Management was known to “pull” a story because of some disruption it might cause in the community, or some chagrin it could bestow upon a faithful advertiser……one looking for any reason to hate our publication or score an ad for free on account of hurt feelings. I got tired writing to suit the wants of so many. I put my job on the line a thousand different times because I adamantly believed inclusion of a particular, maybe controversial story, deserved the light of community-wide readership. By golly that meant for some interesting press mornings with a lot of tell-tale whining, door slamming and statements in anger that usually started like, “I can not believe you ran that story Currie! I oughta fire you right now!”
I’ve been out of the day to day operation of local newspapers since the early 1990’s, and it’s taken quite a few years of contemplation and reflection to appreciate just how much fun it was dodging and darting through the management’s many advisories, and ever-changing, hour by hour protocol. What kind of stories should we run in the community press, and what stories should wind up on the paste-up room floor ….,or on the bottom of the publisher’s shoe?
I had the privilege of working with some exceptionally talented writers who were miles ahead of me in capability. Each of my staff members was highly skilled in research and story development, and when they composed a piece, well, it was pretty much an editor’s delight. Few errors if any, and so well composed that I felt guilty getting a paycheck for pretending to edit. They did however, ride me pretty hard about challenging authority, a more latent skill I’ve honed in the past decade. I was the go-between on many stories, and feature article proposals, trying to seek approval of management to provide space for what might bring a tad more response from readership than the usual two or three letters a week. I loved representing their work but despised the mountain climbing it took, to sell an idea especially if it got too close to a sacred, sensitive wing of the community, they were bent on protecting.
Here’s an example. When I got a new reporter there was always that period of adjustment, which always seemed more for our paper because we needed first of all, to explain the pillars of local society we had to respect….the people we had to please and businesses that needed to be stroked constantly. I hated myself for these start-up tutorials but they could see by the twinkle of a rogue’s eye, I didn’t always follow the rules as set down by the big cheese. On one occasion I was asked to edit through this chap’s critique of a play he had attended, put on by a local summer theatre. It was handed to me by management with the request I provide a little attitude adjustment to the rookie scribe. He had been absolutely ruthless in his review, enough to make any director cry, any performer quit the profession. I had previewed the production myself and his reference to it being parallel to a “rail disaster,” with “toxic fuels leaking out,” was pretty much how I would have written it….with a few compliments sprinkled in just to hang onto that contract ad. He was bang on most of the way through the article but we in the community press (during my years) never used words like “awful” and “of little talent,” to describe a performance by one of our major summer season advertisers. Now put yourself in my shoes, and imagine what it was like trying to tell a high ranking university graduate, in journalism, why he had to give a somewhat more pleasing, encouraging review…..or he might lose his pay envelope. “If they pull their ad contract, they (management) will pull you,” I explained.
Just before you judge us as sell outs to truth and honesty, we always found a way around management protocol. In fact, because I worked with some fine writers with great futures ahead, we simply wordsmithed our way through each week. We got so good at using positives as sarcasm, and writing honestly with subliminal messages that nobody knew at first reading, just how we felt about a particular performance, theatre or musicale, because it was so damn positive and light-hearted. Of course we had a number of intellects out there who let us know they appreciated our sly methodology of slipping a negative review into a smooth silk jacket. While the backers of the show, sponsors and actors thanked us frequently for our enlightening reviews, those who saw through the veil of flamboyance found clear evidence we hated the production, and could offer no reason whatsoever why any one would wish to attend.
I did this for eleven years. It was a laugh beating management’s protocol simply by being half-arse intelligent. Imagine how it must have felt to be sent out to do a business promotion (always in return for an advertising buck), interviewing some guy with one foot on a banana peal (business in the pooper), telling me about the great comeback he’s making. “Business is good,” he’d say, looking to make sure I was writing it down in my note pad. I can’t tell you how many times I was the last bloke (who gave any appearance of being a potential customer) in their business before it folded. I was the “management –forced-me-to-interview-you guy,” with the notepad soon to be filled with amusing anecdotes and doodling.
The problem I’ve carried further into my life’s work as an historian, is this century old (or more) habit of the community press and hobby historical types, rounding off fact to suit the requirements of the audience. We used to call it the “good times were had by all,” standard of operation, and it really screws us historians up today, trying to figure out what actually did happen, and what was the honest impact of a significant event. What angers me the most is that this “good news” pre-occupation to please advertisers is still a hale and hardy reality in the local media. I have to keep reminding myself I was part of the problem for quite a few years, being worried about offending the world around me who apparently all signed my paycheck.
In some ways I suppose, I have become in this sense, an historical revisionist simply by necessity. A lot of details of local history were smoothed and withheld for a wide variety of reasons, and there is no question there are miles between what has been recorded in newspapers and many early books, and the accurate descriptions of a particular event or tragic situation. I can find many occasions when news was sanitized, censored or omitted entirely because it was decided by the publisher at the time, to be too controversial or revealing for the good of the community. For example, there are many sources for the keen historian, to find out more about the appalling poverty and death due to starvation that occurred in Muskoka for decades, without any serious recognition at the time by the local press. Was it lesser news than details of the agricultural society meeting or town council minutes( which by the way always got lots of column space)? By using dozens of sources one finds out fairly soon into research that death by malnutrition was fairly regular from the early homestead days of the late 1800’s into the 1930’s (and to a lesser degree after this). I have read numerous privately published pieces and journals that draw attention to this period of suffering, amidst the pomp and circumstance, the elegance and extravagance of Muskoka’s famous resorts. You’ll find out a great deal of information about the resorts but not about the inherent suffering trying to eke out a living on a Muskoka farmstead.
Each year for about the past decade, I have helped three or four university students annually working on research projects regarding some aspect of Muskoka’s history. And each time I blow their minds by refuting much of what they believe to be the truth about the settlement of the region, and the true economic picture as it was characterized by some historians determined to put our region in the best possible light…..forever. Here I come and rain on the parade. Can’t help it! While I do confess to the positive reinforcement of some articles to please the audience back in my non-glory reporting days, I’m sworn off down-playing anything I happen upon. If you’ve heard that I’m a stickler for detail and a disturber of epic proportion, it comes from those who adamantly believe that you should never let “truth get in the way of a truly good story.” I’m tired of truly good stories and far more interested in seeking out the truth from what fiction is presented. There’s a ton of it to go through but I’m far more patient these days. Now that I work for myself.
I have considerable knowledge about the trials and tribulations that occurred in Muskoka from the 1850’s to the present, and it bothers a few of my contemporaries that the cork might indeed be out of the bottle. Simply stated, I don’t cover up or censor historical fact to please any one at any time, and when I’m asked to assist on a research project, or to advise about a particular time or struggle in history, I have nary a reason to harmonize any information for consistency’s sake, to make a sad tale seem inspirational.
I have become a watchdog today for those who interpret history by their own standard of misinformation. I make notes for posterity. I have confronted many hardcore revisionists recently, making real news read like poetry, and the reception hasn’t been all that welcoming.
So fire me!
I will never misrepresent historical fact. I will never admit to being perfect and I will correct any error so that it does not become an historical obstacle to researchers who follow me.
Thanks for taking the time to read this January 2007 blog editorial. Please read my other blog www.thenatureofmuskoka.blogspot.com
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