Old-time newspapers, old-time politics
with The Western Chronicle and issued on Saturdays under its original name.
Politics was a dirty, no-holds-barred game in 19th century Kings County and newspapers blatantly took sides. The Western Chronicle, for example, let everyone know in election years which party it supported. It wasn’t neutral, in other words, and its masthead (“independent but not neutral”) let everyone understand where the paper stood.
The paper lived up to this declaration of no neutrality during the election year of 1891 when it was bought out by a company under the name of R. C. Dickey & Co. The corporate members were Frederick W. Borden, the Liberal member for Kings County, Robert C. Dickie, Wentworth E. Roscoe, Stephen Sheffield and other leading members of the Liberal party.
Borden represented Kings County in the provincial assembly and issues of The Western Chronicle leading up to the election took his side — and only his side. In opposition during the election was the Tory controlled newspaper, The Advertiser (originally The New Star) which dubbed the purchase of The Western Chronicle as blatantly political. The Advertiser/ New Star began publishing six years after The Western Chronicle and its owners and shareholders read like a directory of the County’s Tory party.
The New Star was first published in Wolfville, then in Kentville. This paper took on the Western Chronicle during an election period in the late 1880s, trading insults, each slamming the politicians they supported. The Berwick Register’s founder, John E. Woodworth, wrote about this feud in an article found by his wife after his death and published in 1904.
In effect, Woodworth wrote that week after week, the Western Chronicle attacked The New Star and the politicians it openly supported. The New Star replied in kind. “The principal result of the quarrel — other than an abortive law suit — were to afford each paper a liberal amount of free advertising,” Woodworth said in summing up the results of the “politician slamming.”
Another result, said Woodworth, was the “overwhelming defeat of the candidate supported by The Western Chronicle.”
According to Woodworth, people had been turned off by the ongoing attacks by the paper and voted against the politician it was supporting.
This may have been an inaccuracy by Woodworth, but he was correct in that The Western Chronicle campaigned solely for the Liberals. In his biography of Frederick W. Borden, Carman Miller writes that “under the editorship of Harold, Borden’s only son (The Western Chronicle) campaigned relentlessly for the Liberal cause.”
The duel between The New Star and The Western Chronicle is the only political feud chronicled by Woodworth in what was an extensive history of Kings County newspapers. But knowing how loose with facts and how libelous some journalists were in the 19th century, I’m sure there were many others.