Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Mar 27/02) - It all began on a kitchen table. Glue, paper, and rulers strewn about amid a haze of pipe and cigarette smoke.

An animated Jack Adderley talks about Yellowknifer's early days from his room at Stanton Regional Hospital. - Mike W. Bryant/NNSL photo

Yellowknifer's founders, Jack "Sig" Sigvaldason and Jack Adderley, were filled with optimism.

The two newsmen had both been fired from their jobs -- six weeks apart -- by Colin Alexander at News of the North, and were about to launch a newspaper of their own.

It was March 1972, and although they were enthusiastic about the prospect of becoming publishers in their own right, they were also dead broke.

Fortunately, Sig, who would someday lay claim to a chain of five Northern newspapers and a printer's shop, had a knack for making the best of a bad situation.

"I think Siggy came up with some quick cash that we needed, maybe a thousand bucks," Adderley recalls.

"He was an expert on how a newspaper was published. All I knew about was putting things in the paper."

Thirty years ago there were no computers or fax machines in newsrooms. The layout had to be done by hand, and the artwork sent to Edmonton to be printed.

Sig's son, Thor, was put to work writing headlines on a strip printer. Adderley's daughter, Susan, took care of circulation.

On Sundays, Sigvaldason and Adderley would work all day and through the night to get the first half of the paper finished so it could be shipped off for printing. After a couple hour's snooze, they would start all over again to complete the second half so that it could hit the streets by Thursday.

Getting creative

Getting the paper to the printer in Edmonton was another job all in itself. It was a time when neighbourly goodwill came in handy. That usually meant scanning the airport terminal for a friendly face, willing to act as courier on the flight down south.

"I guess I knew just about everybody in town, so it worked out well that way," says Adderley. "They'd be lined up at the ticket wicket, and I'd just say, 'Hey, how are doing? We got a paper coming out this week. Do you want to read it?'

"I don't remember anyone saying 'no'."

From there they hoped the paper would reach the printer's shop. Most times it did, except occasionally when an Edmonton cabby would find the original dummies sitting on the back seat of his car.

Decision making in those days was often as much a game of chance, says Adderley. "Siggy smoked a pipe, and I smoked cigarettes," says Adderley.

"If we had a difference of opinion, we would take out some match books. We'd write yes, no, or maybe on the back of the match cover. Many decisions were made on the back of a match cover."

Great Slave MLA Bill Braden was one of Yellowknifer's very first employees.

Fresh out of high school, the 18-year-old printer and photographer was working for News of the North, too, when Sigvaldason cornered him one evening outside of Roy's Confectionary (where the Leisure Cafe sits today) in January 1972.

"We bumped into each other, and Sig says 'Let's go for a walk,'" Braden recalls. "He had a beat up old Valiant. It was a marvel of chaos. There were old newspapers, coffee cups, and empty pipe tobacco packets in there.

Improvisation a must

"We sat there, and he said, 'I'm starting a newspaper, do you want to work?' I said, 'sure.' It just built from there."

Braden became the company photographer, which would include reporting duties soon afterwards.

Like everything else, his job required some improvisation.

"I did all the darkroom work in the tiny, cold porch of my parent's house," says Braden. "For the typesetting, there were three or four ladies in town who were very proficient typists.

"Adderley would scrawl something out, and then we'd bring it around town to these three or four ladies.

"The rush was to get the first edition out by Caribou Carnival. That was the launch and we did it."

Public response

Despite its crude origins, Yellowknifer proved to be wildly successful with the public.

Adderley and Sigvaldason were fiercely independent and roasted all levels of government on a regular basis. Yet in turn, the newspaper's hard stance also earned them respect.

Adderley remembers one occasion in the early 1970s when then Mayor Bob Findley launched a tirade against the media in general for a story that appeared in News of the North.

"City Hall wasn't happy with the media right then, but instead of going after News of the North he went after Yellowknifer," says Adderley.

"I yelled out you're nothing but a kolbasa up there. Next meeting, he walked in with his bottle of pop. He had on a toy holster. In it he had stuck a kolbasa."

After the first few editions, Yellowknifer was moved out of Sigvaldason's kitchen, and into Johnny Rocher's Old Town "reefer" shack.

The building had previously served as a refrigerator unit.

"That was a wonderful place to work," laughs former Yellowknifer editor Erik Watt. "Sig, he was a great carpenter. If the fire department ever went in there, we would've been sentenced to 25 years... Cords everywhere, plug-ins all over the place."

Former Yellowknifer reporter Brad Henderson, now director of communications and operations at The Toronto Star, moved his young family into a house added on to the back of the building when he moved North in 1974.

"Every production day my wife would make 20 sandwiches and five cans of soup, and feed everybody," Henderson recalls.

The life of a Yellowknifer reporter was a never-ending series of triumphs and minor pitfalls, says Henderson.

"I was drinking at the Hoist Room with Sig one night when we saw a fire truck whizzing by," says Henderson.

"He gave me his camera and told me to go after it."

A building on 50th street was on fire, and Henderson went to work shooting photographs, while firefighters tended the blaze.

Next thing he knew, some RCMP officers, who he recognized were new to town, were throwing a pair of handcuffs around his wrists.

"The charge was obstruction of a civil servant," says Henderson. "I knew all the firefighters. I lived with one of them. The fire department didn't care that I was there."

It was only after he was released from jail, did Henderson realize his efforts were all in vain.

"Sig didn't have any film in the camera," Henderson laughs. "The front page of our opposition (News of the North) had a picture of me being arrested."

Henderson did get the last laugh, however.

"I wrote a piece about it for the paper, a first-hand account, and it ran in the national RCMP magazine," Henderson remembers. "It was laughable to most people, except the rookie police."

The Northern News Services empire grew rapidly as the '70s winded down.

Adderley sold his shares of the company to Sigvaldason following the death of his son in 1974. He continued to contribute to Yellowknifer for many years, however, with his column "Jack's Pot."

Yellowknifer began offering a bi-weekly territorial news insert called Northern News Report in 1975. The same year, the company purchased Arctic in Colour from the territorial government.

In December 1979, Sigvaldason took over the newspaper that fired him, News of the North, prompting him to write an editorial ensuring readers that neither newspaper would lose its edge now that the local competition had been effectively eliminated.

The return of Mike Scott to the fold further changed the dynamics of the company.

Scott had been hired in 1976 as the company's sole sales person. After a brief stint in Alberta, Scott came back to Northern News Services and become general manager in 1982, and partner two years later.

"The first thing Sig taught me was that our assets leave work every day at five," says Scott. "All the talented people who worked at the paper over the years. It's people that make this business work."

With Scott at his side, Sigvaldason's kitchen table empire continued to grow. After moving through several different homes during the late 1970s, Northern News Services found its present location on 50th Street in 1981. It became the central hub for several other publications and businesses, including: The Inuvik Drum (purchased in 1988), Canarctic Graphics in 1989, Deh Cho Drum, and Kivalliq News, founded in 1994 and 1995 respectively.

Twice a week

In addition, Yellowknifer added a Friday edition in 1989.

"We have 100 to 120 employees, including part-time, a $4 million payroll altogether and we don't have to ask Mae Sigvaldason to help cover payroll anymore," says Scott.

"Staff parties are a little overwhelming when you see the number of people there and their families."

Scott cannot count the number of changes that have occurred over the years. Northern News Services still continues to be a work in progress.

The town, like its newspapers, has also changed.

After 30 years, Yellowknife's rough-and-tumble demeanour is but a shadow of its former self, but the era is captured in volume after volume of News of the North archives. "Sig published full frontal nudity before and nobody complained," says Scott.

"Society has changed. We ran some photos of oil wrestlers last year, and I thought we'd never hear the end of it."

Long-time resident Shorty Brown says, however, that if a newspaper is meant to reflect the community it serves, then Northern News Services has done a good job.

Yet the company has proven to be more than just a reflection of the community. It is also an integral part of it, says Brown.

"The paper helped me get 6,000 skates for every kid in the Arctic," says Brown. "A majority of them came because of some editorials from Sig. They're pretty good people."