Very quickly I became enamoured with a little booklet entitled "Read All About It". It was lent me by retired local pharmacist Glenn Vinge and written by one-time Winnipeg pharmacist Joseph Wilder.
The cover bore a half-tone print of early, early 20th-century Winnipeg streets crowded with horse-drawn conveyances of various designs, tracks for horse-drawn street cars, sign-boards advertising liquor, tobacco and divers other sinful allurements.
Superimposed on one side and extending across the top and bottom of the halftone was a woodcut of a smiling newsboy in clothes of the period holding up newspapers bearing the word "EXTRA" in large type covering the full width of the page.
Never having been a pharmacist, nor having lived in those early, early years, you may wonder at my own interest.
Two good reasons! Firstly, I have been working in the newspaper business not quite since those days, but long enough to identify with them, and secondly, because Winnipeg was the city of my birth. My family moved to a town only 37 1/2 miles from that city (not far from our house was a sign attesting to that distance), a few months after I was born, and my greatest delight was visiting my aunt and uncle in that city perhaps once a year.
Joseph Wilder's family arrived there when Winnipeg's population (according to Google) was about 35,000, but even then had three daily newspapers, the Telegram (ceased publication in 1920), the Tribune (closed down in 1980) and the Manitoba Free Press ("Manitoba" dropped years ago). However, even when I was a kid, city newsboys still shouted "Extra, Extra", and "Read All About It". Television did not exist, and a minority of folks had radios. Thus lurid headlines were favorites to entice non-subscribers (the majority) to read that day's paper. (I still remember an adult newsy regularly and lustily shouting "Read Free" (pause) "Praise Tribune").
My second interest was piqued by the fact that the Wilders were Jewish folks who had left their home in "Roumania" to escape the escalating anti-Semitism in that country; many of their kinsmen lived in about the same part of Winnipeg as my own relatives, recently escaped from Communist Russia. Groupings of various European immigrants abounded, and before large grocery stores proliferated, each racial group was served by kindred merchants. I can remember my aunt sending my sister and me out to buy items from various stores according to price advantage. She would tell us to buy this item from the Belgian, that one from the Italian, another from the Englishman, a fourth from the Jew, and such-and-such from Mr. Riediger (the non-kindreds remaining nameless).
The area I was most familiar with was bounded by Logan and William Avenues, and Isabel and Sherbrook Streets. To my dying day I will remember my aunt's house being at 564 Alexander Avenue, directly opposite Bushnell and a block from the little park at Gunnell. These streets did not cross through Alexander, because the avenue to the south (Pacific) had houses only on one side, with a railway track occupying the other side.
My favorite pastime was sitting on the sidewalk a few blocks to the east, whence I could watch the copious traffic coming across the newly-rebuilt Salter Bridge. I firmly believed the traffic was there specifically to test the bridge's strength for I could not imagine any good reason for such a continuous stream of autos and trucks. In the country village where my family was domiciled, only Sunday mornings would justify such a collection of automobiles.
The "564" home had special singularity for me because it had indoor plumbing. Flushing of this modern wonder was accomplished by pulling on a chain, which would then release a frightening, roaring stream from a high tank. I would gladly have exchanged that modern miracle for a comfortable, familiar outdoor privy. Alas, the option was not there.
So far, I have written little about Wilder and too much about myself. Hence, I promise to compensate in a near-future column.
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