THE UBYSSEY MARKS A CHECKERED PAST
Tom Hawthorn, [email protected]
Globe and Mail
October 22, 2008
Canada
Often criticized yet much admired, university newspaper celebrates
90 years of publication
VICTORIA — Any newspaper celebrating a birthday these days is cause
for celebration, even if the survivor is a "vile rag."
The Ubyssey student newspaper is 90 – "old enough to be John McCain’s
dad," as the paper noted in an editorial – but behaves like a cheeky
twentysomething.
For nine decades, the paper has upset, outraged, infuriated and,
on occasion, amused.
So much for the staff. Who knows what the readers have made of it?
To mark the occasion, a few dozen stalwarts gathered at a modest
party on the campus of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver
on the weekend. Cake was served. A Queen tribute band performed the
group’s bombastic songs, which means cheese was also on the menu.
Kellan Higgins, the 23-year-old co-ordinating editor, offered guests
a tour of the newsroom in the Student Union Building. In the old days,
the paper’s offices were located in a corner office on the top floor,
where the walls were papered with faded political posters. In the old,
old days, pubsters, as they were called, produced the rag from the
basement of Brock Hall.
As though suffering from the subterranean homesick blues, the
newspaper’s quarters are once again below ground in a windowless room.
"It’s depressing, because there’s no light," Mr. Higgins complains.
The proximity to the campus pub known as the Pit is offset by the
proximity to a campus pub that is known as a pit.
The Ubyssey missed a year of publication before being revived in a
referendum as an independent business funded by students. Eviction
followed autonomy.
The weekend party honoured 15 years of editorial freedom instead
of celebrating the paper’s rich history. Imagine the documentary
series Canada: A People’s History beginning with the patriation of
the Constitution in 1982, or the Bible opening not with Genesis but
the Resurrection. Backstory matters.
The 13 paid staff and 40 volunteers who produce the 24,000-circulation
tabloid twice weekly have little time to contemplate what came before.
"The newspaper’s very ‘now,’ " the editor said. "We’re doing this now."
Not that all are ignorant of the history.
"We have bound volumes going back to the sixties," he said,
emphasizing the decade as might an archaeologist speaking of the
Mesozoic era. "It’s cool looking through them."
The Ubyssey was Maoist in the late 1960s and Groucho Marxist in
its best years. Times have changed. The newspaper praised Stephen
Harper before endorsing Stephane Dion in the recent federal election,
a shocking display of responsibility.
For generations, the newspaper was a playground for students seeking
adventure. The Ubyssey produced poets (Earle Birney) and pundits
(Marcus Gee, Vaughn Palmer) and authors (Pierre Berton, Allan
Fotheringham) and radio hosts (Lister Sinclair, Norman DePoe) and
television reporters (Hilary Brown, Morley Safer, Joe Schlesinger)
and judges (Les Bewley, Nathan Nemetz) and senators (Pat Carney,
Ray Perrault) and a prime minister (John [Chick] Turner) and more
than a few dipsomaniacal newsroom hacks (guilty as charged).
It has less of a sterling record when it comes to producing academics,
a notable exception being former arts dean Patricia Marchak.
The inaugural edition rolled off the presses on Oct. 17, 1918. The
banner headline read, FRESHMAN RECEPTION. Other stories included the
summertime drowning of a popular student. The Ubyssey had a military
editor – the Armistice halting the Great War would not be reached
for another 25 days.
An editorial declared "the main aim of the paper is to print the news
while it is ‘hot.’ " For many years, the old papers were available
only in dusty bound volumes in the stacks of the campus library, or
on microfilm at such institutions as the National Library of Canada
in Ottawa.
Four years ago, the university library began a project of digitizing
the pages of the student newspaper. More than 37,000 pages were
scanned and made available online.
A reader can find much to admire in the pages. In the early days, the
Ubyssey argued for the hiring of a dean of women, supported the demands
for the building of a campus at Point Grey, and crusaded against the
brutality of fraternity hazing, which was banned on campus in 1924.
The newspaper defended the right of Canadian-born students of Japanese
descent to continue their studies after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
In the 1950s, Mr. Fotheringham exposed the racist policies of some
fraternities. Keith Bradbury exposed the activities of the RCMP on
campus in the early 1960s.
While the commercial press timidly obeyed the dictates of Ottawa
during the October Crisis of 1970, the Ubyssey staff and other student
journalists risked arrest by publishing fuller accounts of events
in Quebec.
Irreverent by nature and often puerile in practice, the Ubyssey
was known for an annual hoax story (a classic being a Patty Hearst
sighting on campus in 1974), as well as a goon issue in which popular
magazines were parodied as Maclown’s, Torts Illustrated, Rolling
Clone and Scientific Armenian.
The newspaper generated much criticism. A letter writer in 1920 called
the Ubyssey "a glorified gutter newspaper." Crusty, upcountry newspaper
editor Margaret (Ma) Murray declared the paper "a filthy rag" in the
1960s when it published four photographs from Playboy magazine deemed
obscene by the local constabulary. She demanded it be closed down
"fer damshur."
Mr. Bewley, a jurist and former staffer, suggested the paper be
"drenched in Lysol." The most cutting criticism came courtesy of
humorist and former staffer Hymie Koshevoy, who once pronounced it
"drab."
It was back in 1955 when Rev. E.C. Pappert flipped through a copy
of the Ubyssey before declaring it to be "the vilest rag you can
imagine." The clergyman’s critique delighted the staff, which has
used the slur as a recruitment come-on to this very day.