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Page 6 JANUARY GENERAL MEETING REACHING EVERY DOOR ON THE NORTH SHORE SINCE 1969 In his introductory words, Jim MacCarthy gave such a detailed chronology of north shore newspapers in general and North Shore News publisher, Peter Speck, in particular, that our guest, upon rising was prompted to quip, ’’With an inintroduction like that, I feel a bit like Zsa Zsa Gabor’s sixth husband ... I know what I’m supposed to do but how do I make it interesting?” But capital ’I’ interesting is just what our speaker set about to do. Years before Peter Speck ever even thought of thrusting his toe through the door of the newspaper business, there had existed a long, north shore paper-parade starting at the turn of the century with ”lhe Express” and marching on through the decades with the West Van Courier (Arthur and Fanny Cromar-Bruce), the West Van Guard and the West Van News. The latter had been introduced in 1926 by Harry Hodgson and during its lifetime had gathered in a series of partners and/or owners - Capt. Frank Lovegrove, Harry Gregson and Frank Appelbe until July, 1957 when its last issue rolled off the press. The Lions Gate Times surfaced with Jimmy Towgood in 1938 and held the distinction of being the first paper printed in West Vancouver. Shortly thereafter, it was purchased by Cloudesly Hoodspith who published it until 1975. Meanwhile, back in the early sixties, Hal Straight had started the North Shore Citizen and, in 1969, along came Peter Speck to start up the North Shore News (nee North Shore Shopper). Both Hoodspith’s Lions Gate Times and Straight’s North Shore Citizen primarily operated on a paid circulation basis. Speck, however believed that the business community might want to buy advertising space in a paper that reached every address in their market area and that maybe a paid circulation wasn’t really very important. Hoodspith didn't think it would work but, "unhampered by any previous knowledge”. Speck sallied forth to try it - and, it didn't work, at least not for quite a while. As Mr. Speck himself says, ”I started that paper from a base of absolute poverty - no car, no credit rating (he’d gone belly-up in the radiator business) and no house.” On the plus side, he had two shirts, a pair of pants, a jacket with one arm out and a pair of shoes with two holes in. "I took 50 cents to McGill’s Stationery and bought a Moore invoice book for 47 cents plus 2 cents tax. Next, I went to a service station and picked up a road map and from there to the Post Office where I counted addresses from which I made out a distribution area and finally, with some paper and felt pens, I made a dummy.” Mr. Speck then hot footed it around to a bunch of prospective advertisers explaining to them that he wanted to produce a free paper to be delivered by an advertising distributor and .... "Would you like to buy an ad?” He got them to sign invoices in advance but took no payment because he had yet to borrow the money to get things going. Speck took the invoices to a string of chartered banks - ”a lot of chartered banks” and finally, to the Royal Bank in West Vancouver where he "met a guy called Gerry Connelly. I gave Gerry my grandiose plans and said I'm going to do this and I’m going to do that and could I borrow money?” To this, Gerry replied, "Peter, get real! You're probably the most unlikely credit risk. You need shareholders.” "Well” I said, "it's such a