During the 1930s and early 1940s, Flin Flon had two newspapers.
Provincial regulations require that a copy of every newspaper published in the province be placed in the collection of the Legislative Library.
All published copies of The Daily Miner, Flin Flon’s first newspaper, are now on microfiche in the Legislative Library.
We are gradually getting them scanned and added to the Flin Flon Heritage Project website, but for some reason they have no record of Flin Flon’s second newspaper, The Flin Flon Times.
Apart from one or two copies found in private collections, it was thought that all record of the Times was lost.
In the course of his work with the Flin Flon Community Archives, however, volunteer Don Peake discovered a trove of copies of the Times.
The papers are in delicate condition, some torn and discoloured, and the paper has become very fragile.
We are fortunate in that Peake has developed considerable skills in scanning old photos and documents, and is making good progress scanning these rare and one-of-a-kind newspapers.
The Flin Flon Heritage Project is helping with the process using systems that would have astonished T.O.E. Thorsteinson, the original editor of the Flin Flon Times were he around today.
As each page is scanned by the Community Archives’ Don Peake in Flin Flon, it is loaded into an online file-hosting service called Dropbox. This conveys the original scan to the Heritage Project’s Doug Evans, who is holidaying in Florida.
Evans converts the discoloured paper background to near white, removes smudges and smears, and then intensifies the print to make the faded lettering readable again.
As the restoration of each issue is finished, it is loaded back into Dropbox and sent to the desk of the Heritage Project’s Phil Gies in Winnipeg.
Gies creates a facsimile of the front page of the issue and posts it to the Flin Flon Heritage Project website.
The facsimile of the front page contains a small red logo that invites readers to “click.” The computer coding that Gies adds to the page with the logo is set so that when visitors click on the red logo, the program presents the reader with the entire newspaper.
The papers are in Adobe Acrobat format, which allows readers to enlarge or shrink the pages desired for their reading convenience.
Those interested can read this wonderful old newspaper, and perhaps find their grandmother’s wedding or their own birth announcement, on the Flin Flon Heritage Project website (flinflon
heritageproject.com) under Media/Broadcasting and Newspaper.
There are a number of Flin Flonners working on the Heritage Project, all of them contributing in some way to ensure that Flin Flon’s story is preserved safely and made available to all.
