Future Prime Minister Joe Clark, whose family had long-owned the High River (Alberta) Times newspaper, was continuing this tradition it was announced on this date in 1959. A story in the Calgary Herald reported on Clark’s appointment as an editor.
“Alberta's Young Conservative Association has ventured into the newspaper publishing business. Volume 1, Number 1, of The Conservative Times, appeared this morning to coincide with the two-day annual a meeting of the Alberta Conservative Association at the Palliser Hotel,” the paper said. “A four-page tabloid, it is scheduled to appear monthly on year-round basis. Circulation is listed on the masthead at 6,000. It is mailed free to interested Tories.”
“The first issue contains messages from provincial leader W. J. C. Kirby, Alberta Conservative Association… (and) the front page contains a message from Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, congratulating the YPCs for establishing the paper.
Printed in Edmonton, the publication is edited by Joe Clark, and has on its editorial board Mrs. H. D. Urquhart, Harry Noble, and Harvey Galbraith.”
Clark’s skill as a journalist in often forgotten today. He worked as a reporter for, amongst other publications, the Calgary Herald and later the Canadian Press, in the years that followed. The future PM started writing news pieces and columns in his early teenage years in his hometown of High River.
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.