A History of Canada's Smallest Daily Newspaper

Kimberley Daily Bulletin

As 2012 ended, the Kimberley Daily Bulletin finished its 80th year serving the community of Kimberley.

It was June 29, 1932 when all homes and businesses in Kimberley received a flyer with this announcement:

Commencing on Monday, July 4, 1932, a daily paper, The Daily Bulletin, will be published in Kimberley, Monday through Saturday each week.

On July 4, 1932, Volume 1, No. 1 rolled off the hand-operated Gestetner in a small one room office on Spokane Street, the top floor of the Chatson's Confectionary building. The Daily Bulletin has served Kimberley without interruption since, and still retains the honour of being Canada's smallest daily newspaper.

That first edition contained a brief story on the new enterprise, announced that Tarzan the Ape Man starring Johnny Weismuller and Maureen O'Sullivan was playing at the Orpheum Theatre, that a new electric refrigerator was on sale at the Kimberley Hardware Co., and that Kimberley Motors was available to service your automobile.

Note:
According to the First Bulletin image to the right, the Orpheum Theatre was showing Lew Ayres in "The Spirit of Notre Dame" July 4, 1932.

First Bulletin
Click for larger version.

The Daily Bulletin began as a six day a week paper with free distribution, but that didn't last more than six months. It was cut down to five days a week, Monday through Friday, and became a paid product with a subscription price of 50 cents per year. That was a formula that worked and the paper found a market in Kimberley.

The Daily Bulletin was the brainchild of one of Kimberley's veteran grocery merchants, "Bob" R.B. McLeod, who was familiar with a similar paper in Kellogg, Idaho, Lloyd Crowe and E W. Slade, who was then an accountant with Cominco, and manager of the Cranbrook Courier.

Financial support, not available from any other source, was made possible by a $500 loan from Owen Kelly, Cominco employee. That bought the Gestetner and other office equipment.

W. E. Leaman, Cominco employee at the Sullivan Concentrator, was also interested in the project, and though apparently doubtful of its ability to survive the depression years, took on the task of gathering news and as sports writer. Mr. Slade took on the job of Editor. Slade joined the Auxiliary services in May 1940 and went overseas. His wife May Slade took over as editor-publisher and remained in that role for many years.

The Daily Bulletin had four carriers for its first edition, Jack Holland, George Smith, Ernest Walker and Jack Hargreaves. To this day, Kimberley's kids are earning money delivering the Bulletin to your door five days a week.

We're going to take a quick walk through the Daily Bulletin's history in Kimberley in this special section. It will be impossible to cover it all, so we've just chosen a very few examples of the Bulletin's reporting over the past 80 years.

We are proud to have grown with Kimberley over the years and we look forward to many more years of arriving in your home every day.

PHOTO COURTESY KIMBERLEY HERITAGE MUSEUM ARCHIVES

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