A longtime IMAGE volunteer remembers
Betsy Mann
Looking back on when she helped produce the first issue of IMAGE in December 1972, Jan Meldrum shakes her head, thinking of the project the group had taken on. “It was a bit much,” she remembers, “we were crazy.”
Fifty years ago, the process was very different from today’s. “The articles were typed up in columns on an old Smith-Corona mechanical typewriter,” she explains. “Then we would literally cut and paste them on boards that the printer supplied. We’d begin after dinner and work together until 2:00 am. And that would happen every month.”
This year, Jan Meldrum is retiring from IMAGE after contributing her time and energy to the paper over the last five decades. She has seen lots of changes in the technology available to the IMAGE production team, but it is still a community effort.
Along with Meldrum, early volunteers included Diane Wood as editor and Elinor Mueller in charge of finding advertisers. “Elinor was a whiz at selling ads,” Meldrum recalls. “We owe a lot to those neighbourhood businesses who bought ads in our first issue without knowing what this paper might look like.”
What those early volunteers lacked in experience with journalism and design, they made up for with enthusiasm and energy, along with some early technical assistance from a young man, Stephen Rector, who was paid under the federal government Opportunities for Youth program.
At first, the paper consisted of eight pages and came out once a month. An issue was barely out the door and it would already be time to start work on the next one. More craziness! Still, local businesses continued to buy ads and new volunteers joined the team. Gradually, each issue got larger, and the interval between issues eventually got longer and more manageable.
Over the years, Meldrum took on practically every role at the paper: writing, layout, door-to-door delivery, photography, copy editing, taking the proofs to the printer; she even filled the job of editor one year. “The one task I never took on was typing,” she admits. “But I did drive the IMAGE typewriter around to the volunteer typists.” All the articles had to be typed on the same machine so they would look the same. It was a great day when IMAGE could purchase two IBM Selectric typewriters with their spinning typeball.
At one point, to get larger letters than what could be typed, IMAGE volunteers used Letraset. These were letters and symbols that could be individually rubbed onto paper to write headlines. Meldrum describes a time when a Letraset malfunction could have caused quite a stir in the neighbourhood. “The headline was supposed to say ‘Osgoode School to Close?’,” she recounts, “but the question mark had come unstuck somewhere between our layout and the printing. Closure sounded definite!” Fortunately, the error was spotted when the issue came back from the printer. “We opened up the packages and spent a few hours drawing the question mark by hand on around 5000 copies,” she says with a chuckle.
In recent years, Meldrum has used a computer and email to do her copy editing. Driving typewriters around and correcting Letraset malfunctions are things of the past, along with some of both the craziness and the camaraderie that accompanied those early days. IMAGE continues to be supported by local advertisers and still depends on loyal volunteers like Jan Meldrum. Many thanks to her for her contribution to keeping the Sandy Hill community informed for all these years.
