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22 -- PORT PERRY STAR ANNIVERSARY ISSUE -- Tuesday, September 20, 1988 Bruce Beare: In terms of years of service, no other Port Perry Star employee has worked as long for the compa- ny as Bruce Beare. Bruce, now 67, lives in Port Perry and retired eight years ago from the only job he ever held: printer. It was 1937 when he first joined the company as a 16 year old high school student, working Saturdays and for two hours each evening after school as a "printers devil." That's an old fashioned print- Bruce Beare, seen here sitting at the ke ing business term for apprentice. By the time he was 18, Bruce was working full time in the Star's printing shop, and aside from a four-year stint in the Air Force (1941-45), he spent his working life in the print shop operating a variety of presses, setting type by hand and on the linotype machine. Actually, Bruce said recently his association with the company started even before he was 16. As a youngster he used to accompany his older brother Clarence to the shop on cold winter mornings.It was Clarence's job to come in ear- ly, sweep up and stoke the stove to get the building warmed up a bit before the employees reported for their day's work at 8:00 AM. Bruce landed the part-time job back in 1937 as he and the owner at that time, Sam Farmer, attended the same church. He had never really thought of going into the printing business, but back in "Dirty 30's," times were rough and he was glad to have a steady job, even if the pay was only $1 per day for a work am Farmer as a teenager day that started at 8:00 AM and ended at 6:00 PM, and included Saturday mornings. His fellow employees in the 1930's included George Davey, Irving Boyd, and of course, the owner, Sam Farmer. Bruce recalls Mr. Farmer as a fair boss. "I got along fine with him." Mr. Farmer left the press work to the printers in the shop, devoting his time to running the business, writing editorials and news stories for the Star, setting the type and laying out the four pages of the Port Perry Star each week. Bruce recalls that Mr. Farmer in those days always wore a white shirt and tie, a vest, and often he had his sleeves rolled up. Indeed, a well known photo of Mr. Farmer, Irv. Boyd, George Davey and Bruce, shows the own- er in shirt and tie. The photo, taken in 1937, shows the four of them standing on the sidewalk in front of the Star offices on Queen Street. Bruce can remember well the day that photo was taken, but not the photographer. The Star in those days did not-have a photog- raphy department. A reproduction of that photo is among the photos of Port Perry yesteryears on the walls of the local IGA store. Fifty years ago, a printing shop in a small town was a far different place from the modern, well lighted shops of today with their banks of gleaming, blinking Ey computerized type-setting equip- ment. Fifty years ago, much of the printing work was done by hand: the setting of type, feeding paper into presses, folding and stapling the finished product, and always the presses had to be kept cleaned. Bruce recalls the shop was not very well lighted, heat came from an old stove, and there was no in- door plumbing. The toilet was a two-seater outhouse in the back yard, and the employees would " yboard of his Linotype machine in 1977, prior to moving the machine to its new home at Port Perry Printing, on North Street. Bruce had worked In the Star b pressman for close to 40 years, having start Farmer in 1937. ullding as a linotype operator and ed as a printer's devil for Samuel Young Uxbridge man buys Star printing department On July 1, 1974, the commer- cial printing department of the Port Perry Star was separated and sold to Mr. Henry Janssen. Mr. Janssen was described as a "first class craftsman" with several years of printing experience from one of the top printing establish- ments in Toronto, when the an- nouncement was made by publish- er Per Hvidsten. He came to Canada from Holland with his family as a young boy, went to school in Uxbridge, and began his printing career as an ap- prentice with the Uxbridge Times- Journal. Wanting to expand on his print- ing knowledge, Henry accepted a job with a large firm in Toron- to,but returned a few years later to again work for the Uxbridge Print- ing Company as their press fore- man. In announcing the change of ownership, Mr. Hvidsten ex- pressed his thanks to William Har- rison, who had been in charge of the Star printing department for over 10 years. Although it was originally his intention to work with Mr. Janssen, this changed when offered a position with an- other printing company in Oshawa. The new Port Perry Printing Co. continued to operate out of the rear of the Star premises at 235 Queen Street until its move in 1977. Mr. Janssen is married to a Port P girl, Joyce, daughter of Mrs. C. Coyle, and the couple have three children, Tony, Doris and Marie. : take their "smoke breaks" there. Mr. Farmer, along with being a staunch temperance man, never smoked, and was never heard to utter a swear word. PI od £ "oy Riel,' TEI, " Henry Janssen Is pictured beside a Solna printing But he was a strong supporter of his church and the community. Bruce recalls that Mr. Farmer would often provide printing free of charge or at very low cost to worthy community organizations. In those days, the Port Perry Star was printed on the premises. Four pages containing national and international news were pre- printed by an agency, and four other pages contained the local news, ads and of course, the lively editorials written by Mr. Farmer. It was tedious work setting row upon row of type by hand, but "you could get pretty quick and proficient at it with practise," Bruce recalls. The printing "job work" in- cluded auction posters in two co- lours, wedding invitations, enve- lopes and letter-heads, butter-paper (for the farms that produced their own butter for market, and the fu- neral notices. Often, there would be a "rush job" on a funeral notice which was then posted in the Star office, at the funeral home and in the post office lobby. Bruce says he greatly enjoyed the printing business. "I wouldn't have stayed with it 40 years if I. didn't like it." And there was enough variety to keep things from getting monotonous. During a career that spanned 40 years, Bruce saw an enormous amount of change in the printing business; the shift from labour in- tensive to automation, the disap- pearance of the "hot lead" process with the advent of off-set, and fi- nally the fully computerized sys- tems. Sam Farmer, who had pub- lished the Star and operated the printing business since 1907, died in 1948, and for the next 15 years the business was carried on by members of his family. In 1963, Per Hvidsten bought the business, and Bruce continued working for him until he sold the printing end of the company in the mid-70's. Bruce retired completely in 1980, ending a career that began dent. press, following the purchase of the Port Perry Star printing department In July 1974, when he was a high school stu- i