Cranbrook Rotary

CRANBROOK ROTARY

            Tuesday’s Rotary meeting staged a double header in speaking when Frank MacPherson and L.P. Sullivan gave ten-minute vocational talks.  Mac’s little talk was one of the best of any Rotary member, and was not of the gruesome type, as many supposed it would be.  He actually showed how to beat the undertaker out of a job.  He advocated training for health, rather than calling in the physician after every Tom, Dick and Harry had advised as to the proper treatment for a sick person.  He illustrated this by referring to the fact that in the past week he had carried a beautiful boil on his neck and stated that every person had given him advice on “a sure cure” for boils.  He compared the human machine with that of an automobile and said that the average motorist was always on the lookout for a breakdown or signs of trouble.  The human machine, with its delicate parts, is worked overtime and abused and when it finally refused to function, the sick person takes the advice of his or her friends, resorts to patent medicines, and when finally they can go no farther, the doctor is called in and in many cases is asked to do the impossible.

            L.P. Sullivan dealt with the Romance of Printing, stating it was hard to imagine what the world was like before Gutenberg invented type 470 years ago.  He traced the unmatched progression in the intervening years to the present time when Hoe and Mergenthaler with their newspaper presses and typesetting machines, made the newspaper what it is today.  He paid a tribute to the genius of Mergenthaler, who was one of the scintillating geniuses of the world.  Among those who served in the country printing office and who carried the cognomen of “printer’s devil” we find Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, Artemus Ward, Henry George, Chandler Harris, President Harding, the premier of Canada, Hon. W.S. Fielding and a number of others, all graduates of the printer’s case, the devil and the hell box.  A number of wood letters, carved by hand by the late A.B. Grace, the pioneer newspaperman of East Kootenay at Fort Steele about twenty-eight years ago, were on display as well as a number of copies of the first numbers of the many newspapers published in the district.  These are the property of George R. Leask and were kindly loaned for the occasion.  A complete list of newspapers published in the district from the early days to the present time are: The Prospector, The Cranbrook Herald, the Moyie Leader, the Marysville Tribune, the Wardner International, the Daily Entertainer, the Searchlight, the Fernie Free Press, the Fernie Ledge (afterwards the Ledger), and the Cranbrook Courier.

            Members of the Rotary Club are assisting the boys camp, which will be established at Morrissey.  Several members vouched for the financial care of a number of boys who would otherwise have to remain away from the summer camp.