His name has been synonymous with district newspapers for nearly four decades.
Milt Guba of Emo has been writing district news since the mid-1960s and last week was honoured for his contributions by the Rainy River Record and the Canadian Community Newspapers Association.
Guba was presented with a Bronze Quill, a distinction reserved for contributors to the community newspaper industry who have given significantly in a way for more than a decade.
Editors and publishers are recognized with Silver Quills after 25 years, and Gold Quills after 50 years. But realizing a need for longtime contributors to be acknowledged, the CCNA created the Bronze Quill award.
Rainy River Record editor Ken Johnston secretly nominated Guba for the award, which was endorsed by Jim Cumming, publisher of the Record and Fort Frances Times (to which Guba also contributes stories and photographs).
Guba said he had taken a journalism course by correspondence in the 1960s. One day, he bumped into then Record editor Len Ricci and his father. They asked if he would write district news for their paper, and Guba agreed to try his hand at it.
Within a few weeks, the Fort Frances Times was knocking at his door, asking him to write for them in the same manner.
“I covered everything from Stratton to Devlin,” Guba recalled last week when he reminisced about those early days. Back then, he was given assignments by former Times editor Carl F. Schubring.
Of course, this was only a part-time job but despite his full-time one with the CNR as a transportation operator, he still logged quite a few hours during the week.
But he said his family did not seem to mind, and he enjoyed doing it.
After 39 years with the railroad, Guba retired in 1987 but did not relinquish his typewriter. He continued to write for both the Record and Times, and has nearly reached the same number of years writing as he accumulated with the CNR.
Guba said while he no longer gets assignments from either paper, he keeps busy travelling the district in search of stories that he says are usually not hard to find.
In the early days, he used to get 25 cents per inch of copy and $1 for a photo from the Times, and about $50-$100 a year from the Record. Now he gets considerably more than that.
Guba said some of the trips he’s taken over the course of three-plus decades have turned into stories, including attending the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.
He also remembered one of his human interest stories turned into something much more. He had interviewed a fellow in the Finland area for a story on the unique house he had built.
However, when the story appeared in the newspaper, it turned out the man was a draft dodger wanted by U.S. Immigration.
“The police and Immigration showed up at my house and my wife wondered what I had done,” Guba recalled.
The man eventually was arrested, thanks to Guba’s story.
Guba said he prides himself on the pursuit of truth and honesty. While most of what he writes now is human interest, he said he misses the hard news story assignments he used to get.
But every once in a while, he happens to be the reporter on the scene of something tragic, like a fire. He vividly remembers the fire that took St. Patrick’s Church in Emo as well as the one that struck Morphet’s Welding there.
Time also has seen Guba witness many technological changes. He recalls when both the Record and the Times were still using linotype equipment, where every single letter has to be hand-placed before printing.
Then came photo-typesetting and, in the 1980s, the computerization of the community newspaper industry. Guba has not kept up on the computers but did upgrade from a manual typewriter to a much better electric one.
He also went through five cameras over the years, and now shoots only colour film rather than black-and-white.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
