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The Yukon Daily News
For a period over the winter of 1968/69 I rejoiced in the title of Publisher and Proprietor of the Yukon Daily News. The rejoicing period however lasted only about a week, and then it was just plain hell of a kind I have never know before or since. It was a time in my life when I did not acquit myself well, and I behaved badly in many respects; and although I have had more than a few failures in my life littered among my few successes, my time at the Yukon Daily News must surely rank as my lowest ebb.
Even how I got into the thing is in retrospect something of a mystery. At the age of twenty-four I had no experience of newspapers, no great desire to be a press baron, no mechanical skills of any kind, and was blessed with a political naivety that makes me now blush when I think of it. It was one of those situations that I have too often had to put down to the notion that ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time’.
Ken Shortt was the Proprietor when I bought the newspaper with the financial assistance of two partners, Jim Murdoch and Jim Horwood. Ken was a good and decent man and a character of fair proportions and with printer’s ink in his veins. He had been trying to run dailies, weeklies, magazines and goodness knows all what under some Yukon News title or other in an attempt to find the magic formula of what the people of the Yukon wanted combined with that all-important ingredient – profitability. It was obvious to anyone who wasn’t hell-bent on acquiring the business that the profitability just wasn’t there, as I had seen Ken on many occasions going through the mountain of mail that every newspaper seems to receive; and with a deftness that was amazing to watch, he would place the huge pile of mail on the layout desk and without opening anything, pitch the envelopes containing cheques and advertising copy to the right onto the table and everything else straight into the huge waste paper chest to the left. When I asked him ‘what about the bills’ he said ‘oh, they phone when they’re desperate’. I was there too when desperate creditors did indeed ‘phone up demanding payment only to be met with Ken’s standard line – ‘look, any more threats like that and you wont even get in the draw!’ He would then momentarily go into a paroxysm of despair then bounce back, grin, and get on with things.
I was not a worthy successor to Ken. For one thing, I was no journalist, and for another the daily scramble to keep the paper afloat financially brought out the worst in me. We started by employing a sour-faced professional editor who turned out to be interested only in his colossal pay cheque and precious little else, so it soon befell Jim Murdoch to get into the editor’s chair. He had the energy and the humour to make a go of it and was easy to work with. There were however no demarcation lines, and everyone involved just had to dive into whatever needed doing. Most of the time I seemed to be nursing recalcitrant equipment back into life; be it collator, camera, Vari-Typer or printing press; and I have forgotten the number of times I was in tears late at night trying to nurse something back into life when all I really wanted to do was to kick the living shit out of it and throw it in the Yukon River! Fun it was not.
For the main journalistic content we relied on the daily flight arriving from Vancouver on time.
Let me explain….. The ‘plane contained the daily deliveries to the Territory of the Vancouver Sun and The Province and they in turn contained the blessed articles and stories that would shortly be cut out and pasted and photographed for the off-set printing plates. It was plagiarism which hit 12 on the Richter Scale; but so long as we remembered to cut out the sources such as Reuters or AP or whatever then we were as pure as the driven snow. This may be a good time to thank those various press agencies for never suing us on those numerous occasions when in the mad panic to get the paper out we forgot to use the scissors; but maybe it just wasn’t in their hearts to crucify the only daily newspaper north of the sixtieth parallel with a circulation of under three thousand. Another who deserves thanks is Chris Van Overon of the old ‘202 Club’ who was always at the airport and brought the Sun and the Province to the News building if we were running late. (He was after all a KLM pilot before his sight let him down and started the greatest little steak-house in The North). While on the subject of saying ‘thank you’, special mention has to be made to those young boys and girls who often had to wait for far too long in the dark in 30° or 40° or 50° below, (and in real money – none o’ yer metricated Celsius nonsense) to receive their little bundle of papers for their rounds. How they put up with it I’ll never know. Bless their souls.
Others were not so understanding though, as one time Jim used the word ‘thermos’ just as I have written now, and the repercussions were frightening. Within days we received a letter from some high-powered lawyer in Ottawa threatening us with everything short of a hundred lashes and ten years in The Tower for not using a capital ‘T’ and for not having the registered name symbol thereafter. Thermos® (There, you legal lot – happy now?)
Everything comes to an end – sometimes slowly and benignly, sometimes in a frenzy. For me, the end of my stint owning the The Yukon Daily News couldn’t come fast enough as I had already lost two stones in weight and was more grey-faced and gaunt looking than I have ever been. I got out of that hell a lot poorer, but a little wiser, and headed for Alaska……and another story.
(Last February I visited the Yukon News of today, and a splendid and profitable set-up they have. I was made most welcome by the ladies in the office, and Steve Robertson, the owner today, showed me round his new press building at the bottom of Two Mile Hill. They all remembered hearing the story of me……the daft Scotsman!)
By Alastair Findlay.
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The Alpine Rally 1964
On paper this year’s Alpine looked tough; on the map it looked impossible and it seemed it would take a good crew to go home in triumph carrying one of the coveted ‘Coupes des Alpes’.
The route was divided into three stages, or Etapes: Marseille to Cannes, Cannes to Chamonix and Chamonix to Monte Carlo. Each stage had 3 kinds of timed section: a liaison section, would be from, say, A to D and within this, from B to C might be a Selectif which would cover a difficult part of the route, timed separately and with crash hats worn. Instead of a Selectif there might be an Epreuve, a test to be covered as fast as possible. All rather complicated and I was glad that Pat Wright who was co-ing with me, would be having the timing job.
We arrived a few days before the start and before long rumours were rife about a nasty little col just north of Marseille. Accordingly, we went to investigate one night. It was 9 km long and we had 11 mins in which to do it. When we stopped the stop watch it was showing nearly 14 mins; not a very encouraging thought for when D-day arrived.
Scrutineering was held on the Sunday and Monday in Marseille and the weather, which hadn’t been too good, did its best and we wilted in blazing sunshine. My entry had been messed up from the start; we were running Group 1 in Class 5 but we had been accorded the number 15, amongst all the Coopers, and put down as Group 2. This resulted in slight chaos but finally we were allotted number 22. The rally plate for this number bore a French flag – more outcry as I refused to accept unless they replaced the tricolor with a Union Jack. After promises that this would be done we returned to our base at Cassis. By now the cars were in Parc Fermé so it was no good thinking about all the things we should have done. Instead, to try and relax was the best thing.
We were both glad when, late on Monday evening, we were allowed into the Parc Fermé; had a quick look to make sure that ‘Emma’ had no flat feet and soon we were leaving the glaring lights of the starting ramp, on our way to our first Selectif up the Sainte Baume. Directly behind us was a very fast Group 2 Alfa, very well driven by a racing driver, and this car would catch us on almost every long Selectif and Epreuve. Geoff Mabbs, running one of the Works very fast Group 2 Cortinas, would also pass.
I drove the Sainte Baume very badly and missed the bogey time by around a minute which didn’t make the idea of the dreaded Mimet Selectif (the one we had tried) very hopeful; however, strangely enough, I only missed this by 13 seconds.
Heading northwards and taking in various Selectifs and Liaison sections, some very difficult to even try to do in the time allowed because of stretched mileages, some not so hard, the hours of night flashed past and in the early dawn we had our first troubles. Emma showed every sign of acute petrol starvation; at times we almost came to a halt. Our nearest possible assistance was not until Bedoin where there was a Ford service crew and that was still 80 km away. Suddenly inspired, I switched over petrol tanks and this seemed to do the trick. At Bedoin we had our first Epreuve, a long climb of 21 km up Mt Ventoux; it was near the start of this that Pat Moss went out with engine trouble. The view from the top is always awe-inspiring and in the early morning the banks of cloud looked like long rows of pyramids; it was very beautiful.
As the day wore on it got hotter and hotter and on one of the few easier Liaison sections we did a crafty change into shorts – much cooler. Before the rally I had taken the precaution of making some old towels into seat covers and this stopped any sticking to the seats.
Many of the Selectifs were over small, twisting roads covered with treacherous, deep layers of loose chippings. It was wicked stuff to drive on as it made control of the car extremely difficult. By now the heat was really on: the sun blazed down, the tar melted and the liaison sections became very hard work as col after col came and went. In the middle of one of the Liaisons there was an Epreuve up and down the Col de la Cayolle and on the descent I had the first indication of brake fade; there was a little there but not enough for comfort and it slowed us down considerably. Unfortunately for us there was no let up in the cols and so little chance to let the brakes cool off and about 5 km short of the end of the Col de Valberg Selectif finishing at St Sauveur, coming on a rock tunnel, on an acute left-hander down the col, I put my foot on the brake and it went straight to the floor boards. There wasn’t much time to think; the mountain-side was on our left, a few trees and the usual drop on our right. I slammed Emma into 2nd, grabbed the hand brake and we proceeded to do the most perfect hand-brake turn, ending up facing the way we had just come! Pat jumped out to slow any other traffic while I shunted backwards and forwards to get Emma facing the right way. Miraculously we had hit nothing and just as the first Mini appeared we were ready to carry on, using only the hand brake. Mercifully, one of the Ford service cars was at St Sauveur and in 12 minutes they changed the pads (which were red hot and down to the rivets) and bled the brakes; we pushed on furiously but were 4 minutes late at the next control. Later in the day the exhaust tried to fall off but while Pat and I were tying this on the Ford team boys stopped and helped us. By the time we reached Cannes that evening we hadn’t eaten even a sandwich from the time we left Marseille, 24 hours earlier. We were both out on our feet but forced some food down then fell into bed and knew nothing more until 7.30 the next morning.
It was a depleted field that left Cannes; two of the Fords: Geoff Mabbs and Keinanen were out; of the females both Pat Moss and Anne Hall were out so now we could take advantage of the fantastic service that Fords had laid on. The first thing was getting the exhaust dealt with, which we did shortly after leaving Cannes, after the first Epreuve of the 2nd stage, a climb that I thoroughly enjoyed. Now we were getting the brakes bled just as frequently as needed; the Ford mechanics were marvellous and we even got some food! In comparison to the first stage the second one was certainly not as hard, though the pattern of the roads and loose ball-bearing surfaces still continued. Alas, even a reasonably easy Liaison section can prove to have its hazards, as we found out during the late afternoon.
By now the rest of the Ford team, Henry Taylor, David Seigle-Morris and Vic Elford had closed up with us. Generally they went past but on this particular stage none of us was hurrying and they were all behind us.
I don’t suppose we were doing more than 55 when suddenly there was a vast hole in the road, very deep and taking up nearly the full width. Frightened that I would break the suspension and springs if I went in, I tried to swerve. What happened then was just so quick that I really don’t know. We clouted a bank on the left and then Emma landed my side down. Pat was suspended above me but with her usual calm she asked if I was OK. I think I must have been slightly stunned for things are a bit hazy. The boys were with us in a flash; they were marvellous and so coping. They had Emma on her four wheels in no time. Henry spotted a farmer and yelled the magic word ‘tractor’ and ere long we were towed out. Henry then disappeared under the car and announced that the tie rod was bent but if we turned the track in a bit we could probably make it to the next control at Orpierre, 20 km away, where just beyond it was a Ford service car. The boys then had to push on and Pat, always superb especially in an emergency, together with the farmer, turned the track. Finally we decided that we had done enough to get us going.
Our farmer, who had been so helpful, refused to take anything for the trouble that we had put him to and so we pressed on. At the first right-hand bend there was the most awful bang and the steering wheel was snatched out of my hands. We both thought that the suspension must have collapsed but though we searched under the car nothing seemed to be falling apart. Then we saw the reason; the nearside wing which had been prised up to free the tyre had come down again. Out with the crow bar, but no matter how much I heaved and shoved nothing happened. This time another farmer had been standing watching; now he ambled over with two pieces of wood in his hand, went ‘tweak’ to the wing and the thing was free! If only he had come to our rescue right away we might ….. Ah well, he didn’t.
We pushed on, with Orpierre still around 10 km away when Geoff Mabbs flashed past us, in the opposite direction, looking for us. We couldn=t stop but I saw his brake lights going on and knew he would catch us in no time. And then our final undoing: there was a level crossing and it was closed! Geoff caught us here and told us everything was laid on at the service point. We waited for at least 3 or 4 minutes before the crossing lifted then with the tyres kicking up the most hideous din, we screeched our way into the control. We were late of course and by the time the boys had done a wonderful job of putting in a new tie rod and tracking up by eye, a further 25 minutes was added to our lateness. However, we pressed on. Unfortunately it was a difficult section in which to try and make up time and of course we now found ourselves up amongst all the hairy motor cars, like the Porches and the Healeys.
Our lateness didn’t increase during the rest of the stage to Chamonix but we had a nasty feeling we were 5 minutes outside the lateness allowance and this, alas, proved to be correct. It was rather heartbreaking. Determined, however, that we shouldn’t be out of the rally atmosphere we then followed the 3rd stage route, going to all the Liaison controls where the Ford service boys were, cooking for both the remaining team and the mechanics. This helped to restore our spirits a little. The bitter disappointment we felt can’t have been a fraction of that of David Seigle-Morris and Tony Nash who, with only 20 miles to go to the finish, leading the Touring Category and with a Coupe des Alpes almost in their hands, had it all snatched away; it was too cruel.
Any finisher deserved their laurels and it was marvellous to see Don and Erle Morley collecting yet another Coupe. What a superb team they are! What we did of the rally was very hard work but well worth while. Now poor Emma has gone for a ‘face lift’ – happily not a very serious one.
Tish Ozanne – 1964 Retyped by Pat Smith in 2001
Tales
Danger! Safety at Work
In 1957, during the Mille Miglia, two drivers and eleven spectators were killed and ended forever that truly magnificent spectacle of man and machine. By my calculations, the ban of this great race has cost the lives of many people, and my conclusion is based on the fact that, on average, two more people were killed on the same stretch of road every day of the year than lost their lives on that fateful day. Anyone therefore who was truly concerned with the saving of lives should have been moving heaven and earth to have had the Mille Miglia run every day of the year. I know this is an argument which doesn’t hold water, as a parallel road would have to have been built to accommodate the traffic for those going about their daily business: so let us imagine that if the race had been run on say, four days a year, then the people living along its route would have had three more opportunities to enjoy the spectacle and eight lives a year would have been saved. To date that would have accounted for thirty-eight lives. (I have excluded the lives of drivers likely to have been killed, as I feel sure they would rather have died in a glorious race than exist in their senile dotage in twenty-first century Britain scoffing at their grandchildren for wearing goggles while playing conkers, or slowly dying while connected to countless tubes in a hospital – but that is only my assumption).
The greater part of my life has been spent managing projects on construction sites and oil fields from the Canadian north to the deserts and islands of Arabia. During that time I had two injuries which required medical treatment, and on both occasions they were caused by what I suppose had to be referred to as safety equipment. The most serious accident was when I was nearly blinded by a piece of steel inside a massive floating-roof crude oil storage tank because my upward peripheral vision was rendered useless by the rim of the hardhat I was forced to wear (against my better judgement). I am delighted to inform my readers however that when I threw the offending hardhat at the resident ‘safety officer’ while on my way to the medic he required more stitches than I, and he thereafter ‘considered’ that a hardhat was not much use if 400 tons of steel collapsed on one’s head and that it was generally a better idea to be able to see! To this day I can do nothing but laugh when I see hardhats on the heads of motorway maintenance workers, or worse still, on the heads of workers or visitors inside a factory which has a perfectly serviceable ceiling and roof. To me, it says of such people: “I cannot think for myself. I need Nanny State to guide and watch over me because Big Brother knows best”.
But alas, the choice of whether or not to wear safety gear is no longer an option – enforced as it is by insurance companies, the HSE and the legal profession; and in all three cases has little to do with safety at work. In the case of insurance companies it is to do with being able to impose increasingly higher premiums combined with very nearly countless means of avoiding payment. In the case of the Health & Safety Executive it is to do with various things. Primarily, and the true function for which it was brought into being, is to be part of the State’s machinery designed to control every aspect of our daily lives, and, as a useful adjunct, to provide another army of payroll voters. As far as the legal profession is concerned, it is no more nor less than yet another rich seam of litigation to be exploited remorselessly.
Near Tebay in Cumberland, on the xx of xx last year, Mr xx xx was effectively killed by the Health and Safety Executive. He was working on a railway track and didn’t hear the runaway flatbed carriage bearing down on him, which resulted in his death. Ear defenders can be useful items of protective equipment – but when one is in the middle of the countryside with an ear-damaging noise occurring for a moment or two once every few hours? I think not. In the real world, where some of us still live, we would have put our fingers in our ears for the few seconds necessary and then got on with our work, leaving us aware of our surroundings for the rest of the time. Not for the HSE though. Ear defenders are mandatory for railway maintenance workers, no matter what the circumstances, and at all times. It says so in their blanket regulations. So, by forcing Mr xx to wear the fateful things, his inability to hear directly resulted in his ‘accidental’ death, or, as I believe, in his culpable homicide – by persons known.
When the HSE came into being, it had the option of acting as a guide and advisor to people exposed to risk and leaving the implementation to individuals, companies and organisations concerned, and to the common sense of individuals in any particular field. Their other option, and the one they not so much chose, as leapt at, was to produce a minefield of directives and regulations and to enlist an army of enforcers to implement them. There are countless ill-thought-out regulations, but one should suffice to show the essence of their mind-set. A regulation requires off-shore trawlers and other fishing boats to have slippery, dangerous plastic steps on their ladders as replacements for the wooden types they had always used. Did the HSE even think about this? Did they imagine for one minute that a fisherman would not himself want the safest ladder possible, and would he not have chosen slippery plastic of his own volition as a preference, given the choice? Did they even care? Only when the HSE senior and junior officials involved in formulating and enforcing this regulation (and so many others like it) are dismissed, charged with criminal recklessness, heavily fined, and imprisoned for a few years will anything be achieved as a means of forcing them to think! Pour encourager les autres.
And who, with more than two hairs for a brain, could put in a leaflet concerning the use of ladders, direct that, “the user should face the ladder before mounting”? Verily, the words ‘plot’ and ‘lost’ spring readily to mind.
Need I go on…………….?
by the late Alastair Findlay Back to top of this article
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“Memorabilia from Ken Fraser”
The late Ken Fraser had kindly lent us a few albums he kept of his motor sport career. I have managed to scan a few of the images and include them below for your interest.
1951 Rallies 
1952 Rallies 
1952 Scottish Rally 
1952 R.A.C. Rally
1952 London Rally
1952 Daily Express Rally
1953 Rallies
The 1953 Monte Carlo Rally
The 1953 R.S.A.C. Scottish Coronation Rally
1954 onwards…..
Ken did continue to compete for a few more years after 1953 but unfortunately, we have no images of these years to display. You can see from the 1954 Monte Carlo Route Book that he got as far as Bourges that year. Not sure what the problem was. His name appears as a competitor, along with a few other VSMA members, in the 1958 Scottish Rally Programme below. I’m sure our rally members will find the PDFs below of great interest.
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NKC 195
An 1950, 1360cc Cooper Sports MG Prototype
This Cooper Sports has had a fascinating history, almost lost to the scrap yard but for a petrol head who instead of crushing it sold it for £40 .00 to the chap George Cooper bought it from. John Cooper had made three prototypes during the 1949/50 period. The first one was a Cooper Vauxhall, a Cooper Rover (In conjunction with noddy Coombs) and then, for himself he built the Cooper Sports MG. At Goodwood in June 1950 he gave a young Stirling Moss a race, sharing helmets. The first two prototypes have vanished, possibly broken up, and as you will learn the CMG was so close to the same fate before George Cooper of Kilsyth came along.
Several different drivers seemed to give it an airing during its short time as a Works car. It was seen at Silverstone, reported at Montlhery, Prescott etc. etc. Backtracking to 1950/51 Ken Wharton got his hands on it, rallied, raced and Hillclimbed it with success (as was reported in the mags of the day). It was sold to the Reece Cousins of Liverpool, then Francis Dundas of Dumfries in 1953. Frank used it at driving tests, The Rest & Be Thankful and our very own Bo’ness.
