Yes, much like the school it covers, SFU’s student newspaper The Peak turns 50 this week. After over 150 semesters and almost 2,000 issues of student journalism, we can rest comfortably knowing we’ve fully outlived our glory days and will now be consigned to drunken, nostalgic musings until the day we finally call it a day and move the whole thing onto the Internet. But I digress.
In glorious Peak tradition of criticising anyone running the paper except ourselves, our editor reflects on 50 years of student journalism by picking apart five issues from our history ﾑ our four previous anniversary issues, as well as (arguably) the very first Peak ever published.
October 13, 1965: Name Your Student Newspaper
Every student paper needs a good origin story, and The Peak’s is among the best and most mythologised of them all. Those of us who’ve remained at the newspaper for long enough will likely know the basics: two rival papers, The Tartan and The S.F. View, began at around the same time in SFU’s first semester in September of 1965, roughly 50 years ago today.
The former was established by Lorne Mallin, an ambitious UBC student and former writer for The Ubyssey who pieced together issues in the basement of the campus library. The latter was led by Rick McGrath, unwittingly elected editor of a paper that even its editorial board admitted was meant mostly to sink The Tartan. (The fact that you’re reading this right now is proof that their plan worked.)
That story has been told well enough elsewhere that I don’t plan on retelling it here. For those who are interested, I recommend Mike Hingston’s comprehensive take on the tale from the paper’s 40th anniversary edition in 2005, as well as Brad McLeod’s revealing feature on Don Pulsford from September’s special edition issue of The Tartan, which borrows its name from one of these two pioneering papers.
In any case, perhaps because no one knew what a tartan was and The S.F. View is about the worst name for a student newspaper imaginable, the paper’s newly conglomerated editorial team decided to put aside their differences long enough to choose a new name. With the promise of a free case of beer and the chance to pick a name that would “last until ivy (heaven forbid) climbs these concrete walls,” the first and only issue of Name Your Student Newspaper was released.
It’s worth noting that, despite only running four pages of content, this nameless issue reads a whole lot better than either The Tartan or The S.F. View did. Having elected Sam Steenhuus as its new General Editor ﾑ Mallin took on duties as campus editor, with McGrath handling sports ﾑ the writing and layout show a marked improvement over previous efforts, and there’s even the beginnings of the smug, self-satisfied sense of humour that has become a defining factor of this newspaper ever since.
The editorial announcing the decision to merge the two papers even borders on the genuinely inspiring, noting that “it is encouraging to see that so many students were wholeheartedly in favour of establishing one single newspaper to be a vehicle for the views of the student body as a whole.”
Within a week, The Peak had published its first issue.The rest, as they say, is history.
October 8, 1975: “Happy birthday to us!”
Like any 10-year-old celebrating their birthday, The Peak of 1975 is immature but energetic. The first thing modern readers would likely notice is the lack of photos ﾑ this issue is wall-to-wall text, and it feels a bit like 24 pages of articles stuffed into a 16-page paper. As will quickly become tradition, the requisite origin story retells the Tale of Two Papers, though the staff at least have the modesty to reserve the majority of the article for page three.
Elsewhere, The Peak had already begun to look like its current self: there’s news articles, an area for editorials and letters to the editor, an arts and culture review, and a sports section. One can even see the hints of a features section in longer articles like the one describing the then-new University Centre Building (UCB). There are a few weird ads, including one for Bacardi, one for the Baha’i faith, and another for mail-order research essays (160 pages for one dollar!).
Despite its labyrinthine design and wealth of typoes, this is a fine issue that shows its age but never embarrassingly so. There’s an article arguing for gay students’ rights, several investigative pieces on the status of the administration and the student union, and an editorial by the SFSS president on lack of student engagement. This was a much more radical period in SFU’s history, the culmination of a politically active first decade that the university has yet to match since.
Clearly the big news at the time of this issue was the opening of the UCB, which has since become a nearly un-Googleable blip in SFU’s quintagenarian history; but upon closer inspection there are plenty of treats here, including an article from the then-new Women’s Centre on campus and several letters about a previously published piece titled ﾑ and I’m not kidding ﾑ “The Glory of Zion.” And they call us controversial.
In many ways, The Peak of 1975 is already wholly recognisable to most readers. The copy and layout reflect an editorial team that had outgrown the suit-wearing, pipe-smoking pretension of the paper’s first few years. There’s even a shout out from the Royal Bank of Canada on the back page, proving that annoying RBC salespeople are a more enduring SFU icon than McFogg the Dog.
Sure, most of the people in the photographs look like they just walked off the set of Boogie Nights, but the spirit of the paper is already alive and well in these pages.
October 10, 1985: It ain’t over ‘til it’s over
Break out the puffy sleeves and the neon jumpsuits, because it’s 1985! Right from the start, this decade’s Peak is a little less narcissistic than in times past ﾑ they even resist giving their own anniversary top billing on the cover, opting instead for a special 20th anniversary logo in the top left hand corner of the page. At 20 years old, the paper is finally old enough to actually attend the institute it covers, and boasts just the right amount of cynical humour and anti-establishment ethos to match its age.
The big stories in this issue are predominantly international: the Salvadoran Civil War and the United States’ involvement therein, humanitarian aid to Nicaragua, a youth conference held in Moscow. Given the focus on SFU both in past and future issues, The Peak of 1985 comes off as a bit of an anomaly, an underfunded student rag trying desperately to be equal parts National Geographic and National Guardian.
As far as design is concerned, there’s little change. This Peak still predates the personal computer era, and its cut-and-paste aesthetic is just as difficult to read as it was 10 years ago. In fact, the increased reliance on content from the Canadian University Press and relatively limited list of bylines seem to communicate a staff stretched thin, and without counting advertisements or events listings, the paper’s 24 pages drops down to 17. (There’s also a mention of the “Peak trailer,” a chilling reminder that our offices used to be even less accommodating.)
Equally unsettling is a feature in the middle spread about world famine, which the editor has bafflingly decided to obscure by printing Hunger in big, bold letters overtop the copy. Please stop me dead in my tracks if I ever think this is a good idea.
Still, there’s plenty to love about this paper. Its sense of humour is much more present than in the 1965 or 1975 issues, and a host of political cartoons and gags give the issue a sense of levity and personality that more than more than makes up for its shortcomings. The mercifully brief (sorry, guys) anniversary piece is about as tongue-in-cheek as you can get without pulling a muscle, idealising the hippie spirit of the 1960s while poking fun at the serious tone of both the decade and the paper itself.
Other highlights include a review of a Cure concert at the Commodore, an ad for a Peak get-together featuring “unmentionable” beverages, and probably one of the best sports headlines we’ve ever printed: “Wild Cats skinned.” Meow.
September 5, 1995: Peak outlives Dief
Now that’s more like it! In 10 short years, The Peak has gone from being that stoned guy with dreadlocks who won’t stop talking in your philosophy tutorial to the suave SIAT student who teaches everyone else how to use InDesign and smells like freshly picked lavender. This issue might look about as 1995 as Britney Spears with a Jennifer Aniston haircut, but if loving that is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
In all seriousness, this issue looks good. Really good. Good enough that I’m taking notes for our current paper reading it. There’s a clear aesthetic throughout, the text is clean and readable, and the headlines are punchy without being inflammatory. A full six of the paper’s 28 pages ﾑ continuing the trend of bigger papers every decade ﾑ is devoted to a series of features, including a collection of The Peak’s strangest ads for its 30 year anniversary.
Now more than ever, the paper is looking like its current self. Arts editors from more modern eras will recognise the multiple pages devoted to Fringe Festival coverage, sports editors will froth at the mouth with the revelation that their section used to come before arts, and former features editors (myself included) will happily note the first appearance of the Last Word, which has been a Peak mainstay ever since.
There are, of course, plenty of dissimilarities, too. My libel radar goes haywire when I spot an op-ed in the news section, and what was probably a fascinating feature on computers at the time comes across now as little more than a charming anachronism. Even the humour of the paper’s ticker, “Peak outlives Dief,” is lost on most modern students who have little to know knowledge of our former prime minister John Diefenbaker. (Also, Dief died in 1979, making this reference even more confusing.)
But there’s no denying The Peak of 1995 looks and reads better than ever. The writing is snappy and direct without being overly serious, the photos and graphics ﾑ though few and far between ﾑ are solid, and the layout wouldn’t look too out of place in a modern student newspaper. Eat your heart out, 1965.
September 5, 2005: Happy 40th birthday, SFU!
Coming full circle to our 40th anniversary issue, The Peak of 2005 arguably has more in common with its 1995 progenitor than it does with the paper today. Running a flabbergasting 44 pages ﾑ seriously, how would you even hold this thing in your hands? ﾑ this issue is nearly wall-to-wall advertisements and house ads with the occasional article thrown in for good measure.
Okay, okay. I’ll bite. This issue will easily be the most recognisable of the bunch to current Peak readers, and many of its features ﾑ the photo attributions, the use of Utopia as the text font, the Editor’s Voice column, even the logo on the front page ﾑ are still in use. For better or worse, this paper is the backbone of our current one, and despite our recent makeover, we’re not so different.
This is reflected as much by the design as it is by the content. There’s your Peak Speak asking students to give advice to first years, a news story about the SFSS making a controversial decision, a piece desperately assuring us that SFU students’ apathy is curable, a page full of illegible comics, a last word about a student’s struggles to write their thesis. Some things never change.
Of course, like any other issue in our archives, there are curiosities, such as a piece detailing SFU’s attempts to curtail vandalism on campus following pub nights at the Highland and a perplexing 50-word mini-article about Islamic terrorism and Hurricane Katrina.
And in the middle is Michael Hingston’s Peak retrospective, a charming account of the paper’s early years featuring interviews with both Rick McGrath and Lorne Mallin. Years later, Hingston would publish a novel based on his time at The Peak, leading many reviewers to commend his imagining of SFU’s “fictional” student newspaper.
As much as tradition compels me to dismiss the work of my forebearers as trash ﾑ or at least to point out every typo and kerning error ﾑ I have to hand it to The Peak of 2005. This issue still looks good 10 years later, and it’s a target for which we still aim.
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Fifty years of student journalism is a lot to live up to.
And I don’t mean this article to imply that The Peak of today is any better or worse than those of the previous decades ﾑ we still deal with many of the same issues and fall prey to many of the same pitfalls as our predecessors. We struggle with a transitory and largely disconnected student body. We struggle to balance deadlines with relationships and essays and late-night caffeine overloads. We struggle to make a paper people want to read, and to tell you the truth, we aren’t always successful.
But no matter what The Peak looks like 10, 20, 30 years down the road ﾑ and how those future editors will reflect on our current era ﾑ I know for sure that some things will never change. There will always be students on this campus who want to work with us. There will always be students who want to make a name for themselves, to get to know their university better, and to fight for what they believe in. And those students will always be greeted by equally passionate editors when they walk inside our office doors. With any hope, they’ll find a temporary home for the rest of their time at SFU.
