A clipping I found in a 1940s scrapbook on the sale of a Windsor newspaper led me to re-read L. S. Loomer’s book, A Journey in History.

In the index to this book on Windsor’s history, Loomer has nine entries referring to newspapers. When you check the pages indicated, several refer to the Hants Journal and to a couple of Windsor newspapers that closed up after a year or two of publication.

Nowhere in the book is mention of Windsor’s long-running newspaper. At least not by its full name. On page 327, Loomer refers to the paper simply as the Tribune, the only clue that two newspapers once served the town.

Besides the Hants Journal, the other paper was The Windsor Tribune, which was established circa 1880. In his book, Loomer writes that by 1916 the Tribune’s circulation was a healthy 2,000 and that in 1905, Jean Fielding and Antoinette Forbes were co-owners. The Hants Journal began in 1867 as the Saturday Mail, changing its name in the late1880s.

There is some confusion (mostly on my part) on how many newspapers served Windsor and Hants County over the years. The first newspaper in Windsor likely was the Hants and Kings County Gazette, followed by the Avon Herald, the latter of which may have only lasted a year.Then there was the Windsor Mail, which, according to Gwendoly Vaughan Shand in Historic Hants County, was being published in the 1880s. (Hants and Kings County have one thing in common when it comes to newspapers – they changed names, changed locations and changed owners often, making it difficult to timeline each publication.)

But back to the newspaper clipping that prompted another look at Loomer’s book.The clipping was a news release announcing the sale of the Windsor Tribune to two long-time employees of the Kentville Publishing Company.I was surprised the Company published the story in their newspaper, The Advertiser, and even held a farewell dinner for their now former employees.

 “One of Nova Scotia’s oldest weekly newspapers changes hands today,” the news release read, “when Reginald J. Turner and Frederick Beare of Kentville assume ownership of the Windsor Tribune.The new owners have been associated with the Kentville Publishing Company in the press room for the last20 years.
 “The Windsor Tribune had been managed by Mrs. Jean U. Fielding and the late Antoinette Forbes since 1905,” the news release read. “The new owners will continue to publish the weekly.”

As said, I was surprised by the news announcement. Turner and Beare were hailed as invaluable employees of Kentville Publishing, and they’d be difficult to replace.Yet here we have them sent on their way with a banquet and a lot of congratulations and well wishes.Perhaps, bottom line, Kentville Publishing had invested in the purchase of the Tribune, and it was simply an expansion move.

Within a decade, ownership of the Tribune changed again.Because of ill health, Beare had to leave the paper and move to healthier climes; the paper was sold to private interests in Hantsport.By the early 1950s, Turner was back with Kentville Publishing again as foreman of the printing division.

I’ve been unable to determine when the last issue of the Tribune was published. The Nova Scotia Archives contains several issues of the Tribune, the most recent dated 1955, which may have been its last year of publication.