1970:

After a week without a single daily newspaper, due to the strike by Pacific Press employees, (the second since 1967, and one of five that will take place over the next 11 years), the first issue of The Vancouver Express is printed. The 12-page paper, which comes out three times per week, is written and produced entirely by striking Sun and Province writers.

“The editorial men got on the phone after the [Union] meeting and mustered a founding staff of 10,” reports the outsider. “The first step was to mobilize the beats. The next day the writing for 12 pages began. Somehow they had to produce current and interesting local, provincial, national, and international news without wire service, with only three telephones (shared by the picket organizers, the ITU hiring officers, and mailers). They had no typewriters, no city directory, none of the simple, convenient tools of a newspaper office. But they had the most skilled talent in the country pooled from two of the nation’s leading newspapers.”

The first edition is a complete sellout, running so many copies, that the press at Broadway Printers breaks down.

“There’s no question that we’ll sell all we can print,” says guild president Jim Young, in a statement to the Canadian Press. “There is more demand than we can meet.”

Quotes excerpted from Marc Edge’s ‘Pacific Press’ (2001).

Image: Firemen douse newspapers set on fire by striking Vancouver Province workers, circa 1946. Jack Lindsay, photographer. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Archives.