March 14 marks the anniversary of The Pilot Mound Sentinel. Its building may resemble a garden shed, but the weekly newspaper (now called The Sentinel Courier) has been a fixture on Railway Street for 129 years.
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| The Sentinel office on busy Railway Street, about 1910. The actual mound can be seen in the distance. |
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It hasn't changed much since then.
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The paper was originally a larger-format six-column broadsheet of tight text and advertisements. Content was not just gleaned from the local communities it served; dispatches were included from around the globe. Serialized fiction and typical patent medicine ads were fixtures that helped fill the paper’s eight pages.
The March 22, 1906 issue is of particular interest to the Frasers:
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The Frasers are coming! The Frasers are coming!
This notice from the Wingham Advance in Ontario made the front page of The Sentinel.
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Sure enough, by the end of March, 1906, Douglas (age 58) and Kate Fraser (57) and four of their eight their children -- Pete (30), Doug (24), Gordon (18), and Annie Belle (14) -- had arrived in Pilot Mound.
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| March 29, 1906, page six in the Local News section of The Sentinel. |
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Families from Ontario came west together, and even homesteaded in Saskatchewan as a group.
L-R: Stan Henning (father of Dad's close friend Ray), Howard Hooey, and Gordon Fraser.
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The town was settled by Ontario-born Scots, essentially, including its first mayor and someone who could be considered the Father of Pilot Mound, an un-related (and more prominent) James Fraser, who came west in the 1880s. He was also from Wingham, Ontario, but from a different Fraser clan.
But not everyone was thrilled to move to Pilot Mound from Ontario:
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The Sentinel, June 28, 1906.
Maybe he heard about Manitoba winters.
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Accidents were plentiful, and made for exciting news. A
nimals were often featured. They could be unpredictable and dangerous.
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The Sentinel, September 29, 1910.
At least it was a colt and not a two-ton Percheron.
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The Sentinel, March 21, 1929.
Getting kicked was an occupational hazard, but the editor claims Pete's still smiling. |
Sometimes animals just wanted to go home.
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| The Sentinel, February 13, 1936. |
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The Sentinel, Sept. 22, 1910.
Editor C. A. Barber had a way with words I can only envy.
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The Sentinel, September 15, 1910. A skilled editor can write about anything.
Dad remembered hordes of flies, another reason he didn't like farming. |
The town was originally built on the southeast side of the actual mound, and incorporated in 1883. Two years later, however, the Canadian Pacific bypassed the town by two miles, so the citizens picked up their houses and moved them to the flatter location.
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Ads for the “Fraser and Company” bank feature prominently in early Sentinel issues. Its stone vault is all that remains of the original townsite on the mound. The vault was originally in a brick house built by James M. Fraser. His bank eventually became the Bank of Toronto, where Fraser continued as Manager.
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The young town had a very entrepreneurial spirit and boasted of a variety of local businesses that made it fairly self-sufficient.
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The Sentinel, July 6, 1911.
Pilot Mound's population in 1911 was 457. |
The Sentinel did well to serve its readers and survive when others did not. An earlier local paper, The Pilot Mound Signal, lasted only a few years, until January 10, 1885, when the publisher packed up and moved the enterprise to Manitou.
I admit to an affinity for printers, publishers, and especially typesetters, and marvel at the efforts it took to produce a weekly paper 100+ years ago. The business side could be more challenging than the production side, and editors were always pleading for subscribers to pay their bills.
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Pleading for payment gets creative. The Sentinel, October 21, 1909.
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Frasers stayed out of the headlines, generally, and when they made news it was often for scholastic achievement. Newcomer Annie Belle was first in her class, just as nephew Murray and niece Jessie Fraser would be.
Pete and Gordon routinely garnered notice for their horsemanship, but Gordon was also the town's star speedskater. In 1912 the editors of The Sentinel and The Times in Morden drummed up interest with a skating challenge and some good-natured ribbing.
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| The Sentinel, January 18, 1912. |
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| Pilot Mound has faith in Gordon. The Sentinel, February 8, 1912. |
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| Race day and another poke at The Times from The Sentinel, February 15, 1912. |
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| Gordon wins handily. The Sentinel, February 22, 1912. |
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The Sentinel, May 3, 1917. Pete's brother Gordon also had champion Percherons. Gordon Fraser ran the livery barn down the street from the newspaper office. He become a well known horse trainer, harness race driver, and dealer in Canada and the U.S.
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Likewise, Pete owned some fine standard bred horses. Graham Worthy was a notable stud for several years. Pete sold him in December 1942, by which time there were several "Worthy" namesakes doing well on the racetrack, including P.H. Worthy, nicknamed Popeye.
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The Sentinel, May 18, 1933. As a boy, Dad lamented that Frasers were always studying breeding books, but it was a serious business for his dad and uncles.
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| Front page of The Sentinel, November 29, 1928. Julius, bought in 1925, was Pete's best-known horse for several years, eventually being replaced by Prairie Prince in 1936. |
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| The Sentinel, July 20, 1922 |
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Recurring ad from The Sentinel, mid-1920.
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Pete's horses could work hard, too. His was the team to beat at local fairs and matches.
The Sentinel, June 14, 1917.
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The Depression hit Pilot Mound hard. Grasshoppers devoured every green thing, and rust afflicted grain that had showed promise. Drought and wind completed the cliché. Pete Fraser's farm was as vulnerable as any.
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| The Sentinel, June 14, 1934 |
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And a thank you from Pete on the following page.
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Dad always said the Scotch were clannish. They stuck together back in Ontario and out on the prairies. Mounders were a close-knit, supportive group, quick to chip in to make any event or endeavour a success. Pete was busy on several committees and clubs (especially the Hockey Club), and was even a judge for dances and violin contests. Although not a young man, he could skate, curl, and play a little old-timer baseball on Sports Days.
What goes around, comes around
Like his friends, Pete was quick to lend a hand and a smile, as The Sentinel noted:
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| The Sentinel, May 20, 1943 |
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The Sentinel, May 20, 1943
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In July of that same year, Pete's friends were quick to reciprocate:
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The Sentinel, July 29, 1943.
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| As was the pattern, Pete posted a thank you in The Sentinel, August 12, 1943. |
Our Frasers may not have been business leaders like mayor and banker James Fraser or long-time councillor and race-track owner J.C. Stewart (who seemed to be involved in everything), but they were experts in their fields (plowed or otherwise), and respected citizens who contributed to the success of this small prairie town.
Source
The Pembina Manitou Archives contains scans of The Pilot Mound Signal, and The Pilot Mound Sentinel from its first issue in 1889 through 1962. Subsequent issues are likewise available from the source, the Manitoba Legislative Library.
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