Digitizing my life continues…
I’ve mentioned every now and then about the amount of material in my collection – photos, publications, and documents – that I’m scanning, then getting rid of in various ways. I’m currently in a large box of newspaper clippings that I’ve been carting around for 63 years. Its last big move was when my parents mailed it from Fort Langley to Whitehorse at a cost of $13.00.
Actually, before getting to that box, I was in one of several boxes of travel publications of various kinds from all over the world that I had started mailing for and saving in 1960 or ’61. There’s too much of it to deal with and there’s probably no point, so most of it just went to the recyclers. I took a few representative photos of what I had.
I try to maximize the usefulness of material, and decided that logging each clipping, though a huge job, may at least provide some useful insights. The idea right from the start in 1961 was apparently to save items that would be of long-term interest, and that has proved to be true. Except for a period in the 1980s when aviation was my passion and I kept a great deal of material only of interest to an active pilot, I’m logging everything. The vast majority of these articles and photos are online in the newspaper archives I subscribe to – anything I can’t verify, gets scanned.
The first clippings are from January 10, 1961, when massive flooding hit the Fraser Valley where my family lived (we were on high ground and weren’t affected by it). I was 10 years old, and the clippings may have been for a school project about current events.
Three months later, on April 12, 1961, the big news was that Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had become the first man in space. During the next few years I clipped a lot of space-race material – the successes and the failures, and the possible future.
I’ve come across some pretty bizarre news. Perhaps the most extreme were related to Vancouver race car driver Bob McLean, my hero. I have photos I shot of him on the track at Westwood in his dark blue Mustang in 1965 – Dad must have driven me to the track. On March 26, 1966, Vancouver’s morning paper, The Province, published a colour feature on the races he was in at Sebring with a Ford GT-40. That afternoon, The Sun reported that he had been killed at Sebring 🙁
The lead-up to Canada’s Centennial in 1967, and the celebrations of that year, got a lot of attention.
In the later 1960s and early ’70s in particular, I was saving a lot of articles about changing lifestyles – hippies and what were then called homosexuals show up a few times, as does drug guru Timothy Leary.
I’ve been able to easily share some of the material such as the next article about the Yukon pavilion at Expo 86, which was posted on my Yukon History & Abandoned Places group at Facebook.
I’ve always been surprised that there’s no group for BC aviation history at Facebook, so I created one a few days ago (called BC Aviation History) and have started sharing clippings there.
So, that’s how I spend much of my days. But the worst of Winter is now over, the sun has some warmth, and there are stirrings to somehow get other things happening in the months ahead. I’ll have more to tell you soon about life outside, on the road and in the wilderness, and on another Alaska cruise in June 🙂
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I have a big photo rich Auto Year annual publication, I will have to read up on that Sebring Auto race. Obstacles (the track itself, always) were many back in those days and for years afterwards, ‘safety’ a dirty word. My own hero in that time, a F1 driver, Jim Clark, killed in a smaller race event, think he hit a tree, rescue services were minimal even at the larger interntional events (like Sebring too). We kept the New York Times clipping for years and my father said it changed his interest in auto racing and ruined a boys’ dreams for a few nights. Glad to hear your are making travel plans for the good weather season.
It’s true that only sissies took safety concerns seriously in those days – out loud, at least. So many racers and spectators were getting killed ,though, that changes had to come or the sport itself would die.
Lovely to see Dad’s handwriting on that box!
This is so cool, Murray. Thanks for sharing these clips with us. I love old newspaper clippings that give us such insight into the time. A few years ago I found an old newspaper my grandmother had saved in her belongings. When I opened it up the words ‘GERMANY SURRENDERS’ filled most of the front page! I pressed it under the glass of one of our tables to preserve it. Big day in history…
Thanks, Lis – I think that having mementos like your grandmother’s clipping give much more impact to history than just reading about it in a book. I’m really glad you saved it.
The Yukon pavilion at Expo 86 was my first exposure to anything Yukon, I was driving tour bus for Gray Line of Vancouver for the exposition, then off traveling and hitting the Yukon for the summer of 1987 with Atlas Tours, memories are faint but so is the paint! take care Murrster 🦫👍
I had flown my Cessna up to the Yukon the previous summer so was particularly interested in the pavilion. The pavilion was looked at as the home of the Yukon Transportation Museum, but the economics of it didn’t work. I sure wish we could get together for a beer, Paul – perhaps two 🙂