For more than 100 years, an 1888 edition of the Minden Echo sat crumpled in a knot hole, providing insulation behind siding at the back of Banks General Store in Haliburton.
It was located during renovations by a woman who then turned it over to the Haliburton Highlands Museum.
Former employee Steve Hill said he put it into a moisture chamber overnight to soften it up. He was able to lay it flat and put it under glass to hold it so it didn’t spring back up.
“That’s the best we can do with it,” Hill told people at the public launch of the Haliburton Highlands Digital Archives Oct. 22.
At the front of the room, digitization committee member, Ted Brandon, showed the oldest paper in the archives on a projector, replete with an ad for the Dominion Hotel.
“You might say that’s only half there,” he commented. “We’re excited because it’s half there. It’s pretty darn good.”
After scouring basements, back rooms, galleries, museums, and newspaper offices, the committee had Toronto-based company MES Ltd. digitize more than 7,000 Haliburton County newspapers, under some 12 mastheads. Brandon reckons it translates into about 140 years of Highlands history.
Committee member Barb Bolin said the project began as they realized a fire could wipe out much of the Highlands history as recorded in newspapers.
The committee (Jim Blake, Carol Moffatt, Adele Espina, Andrea Brown, Steve Hill, Tom Whillans, Brandon and Bolin) got to work figuring out how to do it, including finding private donors, and service clubs, to help with the cost.
Brandon recalled finding some 1977 editions that were so large they had to be folded twice. It created discoloured waves. Hill remembered how they tracked down 19 editions from 1892 that were used as kitchen flooring, found under linoleum. Former publisher of the Highlands Express, Bob Mann, had editions stored in a garage without climate control, rendering them quite dark. Brandon said they weren’t sure they’d be usable.
However, he said MES did an “amazing job.” Brandon said the papers were in Toronto for 10 months, the first three under a press to flatten them out and getting the yellowing out. They were pleased with the quality of the scans.
Mann said the Express copies came out “beautiful. I’m very impressed.”
Brandon added there are probably still thousands of newspapers that the archives don’t have.
“We are reaching out to the community, asking them to search their basement, their attic, their garage for old copies of local newspapers in the hopes that we will be able to start filling in the gaps.”
People can bring pre-1980 local newspapers to a library and they will be taken to the Haliburton Highlands Genealogy Group. They are also looking for other missing editions.
As to the name that appears in the archives the most, it is Dysart et al mayor Murray Fearrey followed by former real estate agent, Bill Kulas.
As to the community reaction to date, Bolin said, “we’ve just had wonderful, wonderful feedback about the resources available in Haliburton County.”
Go to hhda.ca
There will be a free online information session Nov. 12 at 2:30 p.m. Register by visiting HaliburtonCounty.ca/SALC
