by Jane Shulman

Throughout their history, Concordia, Sir George and Loyola have housed five main student newspapers: Loyola News, The Georgian, The Paper (later The Concordian), The Link and The Concordian. Many of the papers’ alumni went on to careers in journalism, while others took different professional routes. Although generations separated the staffers of the five papers, a few things, it seems, never changed. The student-press veterans interviewed here remember camaraderie, late nights, bad pizza and, above all, lessons that shaped their lives.

Loyola News

The student newspaper of Loyola College, Loyola News, debuted in November 1924 as a text-filled, legal-sized single page. Dubbed the “official college weekly” on its masthead, the paper listed coming college events and briefs about past events. Its layout during those early years was a single column across the page, not uncommon for newspapers at the time. The next several years saw the addition of photos, graphics, columns and more pages.

Brian McKenna, L BA 67, was one of the many Loyola News staffers who carried the lessons he learned there throughout his successful career. An award-winning (and sometimes controversial) documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist, McKenna’s work includes The Killing Ground and The Valour and the Horror, films about Canadian soldiers in the First and Second World Wars, respectively.

In 1966 McKenna was an honours English student at Loyola. He was so outraged by a theology class and the professor who taught it that he went to the newspaper office wanting to write a diatribe about the class. He was welcomed with open arms and soon became a regular writer. Before long, McKenna became desk editor and, he remembers today, “through a series of coup d’états I eventually became the editor.” He replaced Don Ferguson, L BA 70, now of Royal Canadian Air Farce fame, in late 1966 and stayed on until the end of the 1966-67 academic year. McKenna remembers spending 60 to 70 hours a week working on the paper, which published on Tuesdays and Fridays at the time (it later published only on Fridays). “There was a staff of almost 50 people,” he says. “We did the layout and we’d work all night. At 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. it would go to the printer and they set it.”

McKenna found the experience invaluable. “We had five news editors who went to the Star or the Gazette,” he says. “It was a terrific bunch of people, and so many went on to have successful careers as journalists with the skills they first learned at Loyola News.” More than anything, says McKenna, “I remember the camaraderie, the bad pizza, Mr. Hot Dog and rooms that were always smoke-filled. It was the first time in my life that I had a sense of purpose, that I was doing something, and there was so much excitement. Loyola News shaped us.” He adds, “Writing is critical to everything I have done, and it all began that first year at Loyola News.”

The Georgian

Sir George’s Georgian began publishing in December 1936. It was a tabloid, ranging from four to 12 pages over the first few years. The new paper’s editorial board included a number of women and had a “women’s editor” and “women’s sports editor,” rare for its time. Its masthead proclaimed it as “the official organ of the students’ council of Sir George Williams College,” and it cost five cents, although the charge didn’t last very long. The paper eventually published twice weekly.

By the late 1960s, as was the case for most Canadian university student newspapers, The Georgian had become more political. The paper became embroiled in controversy surrounding the infamous Sir George computer riot in February 1969. David Bowman, S BA 73, was editor of The Georgian in 1969 and remembers well how events unfolded: “The first thing we heard was that a complaint had been filed against a professor that there was discrimination regarding the marking of the work of some Caribbean students. The inquiry into the allegations was not public, and its findings were not communicated well to students. As the matter grew in scope and in seriousness, we gave some black students an issue of The Georgian to air their grievances.”

Bowman recalls being in and out of the office during the production of what later became known as the “Black Georgian,” so named for its almost entirely black cover. “An initial, small run was printed,” he says, “and when I looked at the issue, I had some concerns about the content and had a lawyer look at it for libel. In the meantime, some copies had been distributed.” Although very few copies made it out of The Georgian offices, the damage was done. The student association, which was responsible for the paper, fired Bowman. “They fired me because I expressed views they could not tolerate,” says Bowman. “I can’t remember the exact grounds they used, but they cited the extra cost of producing that issue as a reason. The entire editorial board left. The student administration hired a new editor and he brought new people with him,” he says.

More than 30 years after the Black Georgian and the computer riot, Bowman reflects on the raucous period in Sir George’s history. “For some on the student administration,” he says, “it was the proverbial last straw. It was an opportunity for them to take back control of The Georgian.” He adds, “I certainly have no regrets about the position we took. We were part of an extraordinary time.”

The Paper

As its masthead explained, The Paper was “the Journal of the Evening Students’ Association of Sir George Williams University”; it was published weekly from 1968 to 1973. Around the time of the Loyola-Sir George merger, the newspaper’s name was changed to The Concordian, which was published from 1973 to 1975. In 1975-76, a few issues of The Concordian were printed, but they were not in a newspaper format, just one- or two-sided sheets of coloured paper with announcements about upcoming events. The final issue of The Concordian was labelled as a product of the Part-Time Students Association.

Wayne S. Gray, S BA 71, was the first editor of The Paper. Now a lawyer in Oakville, Ontario, Gray was an evening student at Sir George on and off during the 1960s. When he returned to school with the intention of completing his bachelor’s in 1968, he came into contact with the Evening Students’ Association, which was planning, Gray says, “an alternative to what was seen then as an increasingly left-wing day students’ newspaper, The Georgian.”

“The Paper’s mandate was, essentially, to more accurately report the news of Sir George and later McGill and Loyola College. The Paper was instrumental in digging out some pretty hush-hush stuff on a few things,” he says. “In one case, The Paper’s revelations about the inadequate academic credentials of a president of the Day Students’ Association caused the president to resign office after we exposed the cover-up by administration officials.”

Gray was editor of the paper from 1968 until the spring of 1973. He recalls one hiatus during that time when “the Sir George administration purported to exercise censorship rights that led to a bitter battle that I eventually won with legal counsel.”

Gail Campbell, S BA 72, a staff member at The Paper at the time, remembers the incident well. “It was a few months after the computer riot. As editor, Wayne allowed a controversial cartoon to be published,” she says. “The edition was pulled by the administration. There had been a lot of reflection and soul searching before the cartoon was published, and the administration’s reaction was predictable.” Campbell, who was a unit coordinator at the Montreal General Hospital for 25 years and is now the administrative assistant at the Montreal Pastoral Counselling Institute, says, “I have not discussed this issue with Wayne since, but I doubt his reaction today would be any different. He believed he was right and that he did the right thing at the time.”

Campbell says of her own decision to join The Paper, “Just after the riot in ’69, I felt a need to get involved.” After Sir George, she says, “I continued a career of activism, organizing and heading a union at the Montreal General for 17 years.” Through working at The Paper, she says, “I had an opportunity to learn from the people around me. It was
a broadening experience.”

The Link

When Sir George Williams and Loyola merged in 1974, many administrative services merged as well. It was a time of upheaval for almost everyone in the university community, but also an exciting opportunity for change and growth. It was no different for the schools’ student papers. Loyola News was in its 59th year at the time of the merger, while The Georgian had a 47-year history. Each paper continued to publish for a time, but by the winter of 1979 merger discussions had begun. Over the next several months editors of both papers negotiated the fine points of how to best pool their resources, and by the fall of 1980 a new paper hit the stands at Concordia, The Link.

The name represented the joining of two papers and two universities, but also the bridging of the gap between school and the world at large. Yet it almost didn’t happen that way. Danny Kucharsky, BA 82, GrDip 83, a Montreal freelance journalist who worked at The Link during its first year, remembers a vote by about 15 staff members of Loyola News and The Georgian. The names nominated other than The Link were The Accord and The Meridian. “I think The Link won by about one vote,” Kucharsky recalls.

Montreal Gazette national reporter Phil Authier, BA 82, was The Link ’s second editor, taking the job four months into the newspaper’s first publishing year. He recalls, “The Link’s first year was very task-oriented. There was a really small staff because both The Georgian and Loyola News had lost a lot of people to graduation the year before.” He adds, “It was a real struggle making it work, also because we produced the paper twice weekly.” Authier says he and the other members of the editorial board were determined to see the paper succeed. “It could not fail — that’s why it almost killed us.”

By the second year, the paper’s future had become more secure, and Authier and the others shifted their attention to other matters. “It became more like, ‘Oh, gee, we’re putting out a paper. Okay, what do we stand for?’ ” he remembers. “We started doing supplements on issues that weren’t being covered in the mainstream press. Once we had a sense of the paper’s mandate, we had much more fun.”

Francesca LoDico, BA 96, a Montreal writer and book editor, was The Link’s editor in the late 1980s. “The Link was one of the first papers to do issues dedicated entirely to stories about women, queer culture, Native rights, civil liberties and other important subjects rarely covered in the mainstream press,” she says. “We were very conscious about not ghettoizing these issues.” The Link’s annual special issues and supplements remain a critical part of the newspaper’s identity, as does the discourse on social and political issues.

“It’s one thing to talk about these issues in the classroom, but it’s another thing to have them covered in your student paper,” LoDico says. “They become part of everyday life and not just material for a term paper.”

The Concordian

During the 1983-84 publishing year, a group of about five Link writers and editors started meeting privately and informally. Recalls Frederic Serre, BA 86, one of The Link’s news editors at the time and currently a Montreal illustrator (including for Concordia University Magazine), translator and writer, “These were rant sessions where we would complain that The Link was going crazy with international stories and not covering the school enough. One day, after many beers, one of us said, ‘Why don’t we start our own paper?’ We gradually started discussing it more seriously,” he says.

The group decided to call the new paper The Concordian. Serre admits that he and the others had no idea the name had been used for a Sir George newspaper 10 years earlier. He also reveals, “It was a miracle the plan for a new paper stayed a secret for so long. When CUSA [the undergraduate student association] okayed the budget, all hell broke loose,” Serre says. “The Link felt betrayed. Lots of people still get angry or refuse to talk about it altogether.” Despite protests by Link staffers, The Concordian’s first issue appeared in January 1984. The paper continues to publish every Wednesday during the school year.

“I hoped it would continue, but I didn’t think it would,” Serre acknowledges. “There were about eight of us to start, and then a few left. In October 1984 The Concordian almost folded because the people who started it were so burned out.”

Gabrielle Korn, BA 88, worked on production at The Concordian from 1983 to 1988. The former director of Concordia’s alumni affairs is now communications coordinator of Les Amis de la Montagne, organizing events for the 125th anniversary of Mount Royal Park. She recollects working late into the night in The Concordian’s basement office in the now-demolished Centennial Building at Loyola. “It was pretty grim,” she relates. “I remember eating lots of hot dogs from Mr. Hot Dog. I also spent a great deal of time in an annex on Mackay doing the typesetting.” But she recalls the period fondly. “My experience at The Concordian helped me write anything on fairly tight deadlines.”

Serre agrees. “The experience from the two papers still helps me today. We learned about working on deadlines and fulfilling our obligations to the printer and to readers,” he says. “It was a character builder. You write stories and then you’re accountable for them. I think a lot of us are stronger people because of our time at the papers.”

Jane Shulman is a Montreal freelance journalist.