In the mid 1940s I was about 10 years old and my father was a printer/linotype operator at The Citizen. The paper was published on Mondays and Thursday at that time. On one of those paper days I found myself hanging around and generally getting in the way at the paper's Quebec Street offices.
In an attempt to get me out from underfoot my dad handed me a paper from the pile on the front counter and said "go sell this."
I didn't even get out the front door when someone walked in, I said, "paper?" to him and I made my first sale. The paper sold for five cents so I took the nickel back to the lady working behind the counter and, as a paper boy, was sold two for five cents.
What a deal - 100 per cent markup. Out the door I went with my two papers, quickly sold them and ran back and bought four papers.
I don't recall how many I sold, but every paper day I was back buying and selling papers.
But like many entrepreneurs I occasionally got a little carried away with my sales abilities and found myself with papers left over and the streets quickly emptying as people went home after work. Newspapers don't have a very long shelf life and if I went home without selling them I would be facing a loss.
I don't recall where I came up with the solution to this dilemma but I did.
There were half a dozen or so beer parlours in the downtown hotels at that time. I found that if I ran in the door of the beer parlour I could hit several tables and quickly make a sale or two before the bartender put the run on me.
This worked for me for a while but on one of these forays the beer parlour had high-backed booths rather than tables.
When I dashed up to one of the booths I found it was occupied by the printing staff from the paper, including my dad. He wasn't pleased so that solution for my excess inventory vanished.
I decided what I needed was a paper route rather than the vagaries of street selling.
The per paper profit was less but the sales numbers were steady so, for 75 cents, I bought a paper route.
There were no organized routes or protected areas in those days.
A paper boy established his own route by word of mouth and they very often overlapped other kids areas. I built my route up to a respectable size and kept that up for several years. At month's end we had the added task of knocking on all of our customers doors and collecting.
Then I would pay my bill at The Citizen.
I learned the hard lessons that I needed to make all of my collections and that I very much needed to pay my paper bill before spending the money. Good lessons.
As part of the Citizen's centennial celebrations, we're asking longtime residents to share their memories of The Citizen with us and how it made a difference in their lives. If you have a story to tell and want to share it with our readers, drop us a line at [email protected].
