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Top 100 Fort Frances Times Archival Articles

Fort Frances Times Celebrates Centenary on the Information Highway

For the past 100 years the Fort Frances Times has chronicled the history and development of Ontario’s Rainy River district from gold rush times around the turn of the century through the birth of the logging industry and the building of the railways and highways that opened the area to the rest of the country. Recently, to celebrate its centenary, the newspaper put 100 stories from its earliest editions onto the Internet.

The project was carried out under contract to Industry Canada’s SchoolNet Digital Collections program, which gives people 15 to 30 years of age entrepreneurial and technology-based job experience converting collections of Canadian material into digital form for display on SchoolNet. The SchoolNet Digital Collections web site has grown to become possibly the largest single source of Canadian content on the Information Highway.

The Fort Frances Times articles appear on the Internet as they did when originally published. They have not been edited in any way. The topics, turn of phrase and writing style evoke another era, when Fort Frances was barely a village and the Rainy River area a vast frontier. The web site design respects this tribute to history and the visitor is treated to a trip back in time.

Jim Cumming, publisher of the "Fort Frances Times" and SchoolNet Digital Collections project leader, said "the web site was built by a team of three students who were involved in every aspect of the project, from choosing the themes and articles to scanning and enhancing the readablity of the texts". Most of the original type was handset, causing it to be finely spaced and difficult to read. Also, many of the pages had yellowed with age. Now the articles are easy to read and the visitor can move quickly from one article to the next, or back and forth through different themes.

Cumming said, "Producing this web site through SchoolNet Digital Collections was a plus for his newspaper. The team of students brought a fresh perspective to the project". They chose topics and articles they felt would interest a web audience, he explained. There’s an emphasis on material about food, movies and even a piece on beauty tips and make-up. This site would likely be very appealing to young people.

Cumming noted that the site is also of interest to senior citizens in the area who enjoy studying regional history. Sixteen computer stations at the Community Access site in the local library are one way they can visit the site. Community Access is an Industry Canada program covering part of the cost of linking communities to the Information Highway.

Cumming has warm words of praise for his talented team. Christine Siemiernik, an award-winning journalism graduate from Humber College in Toronto, was team leader. Lauren McCoy is a high school student in Fort Frances with ambitions to be either a graphic designer or a police officer. She was responsible for scanning pictures and graphics contained in the site. Another Fort Frances high school student, Chris Cooper, is something of a computer whiz and acted as the project’s technical support expert.

Christine Siemiernik said she knew very little about Internet technology at the outset. "I learned many things through this job experience, from HTML to web site design. Equally important, I developed leadership and time management skills". She also enjoyed her time in a different part of the country. "A hundred years ago there wasn’t even a town here. Through this project, I’ve learned how Fort Frances grew and changed".