TRANSCRIPT

Wally Smith: After working se-.. on several other newspapers, and spending a.. a few summers on my father's dry-belt.. homestead north of the Red Deer River, I returned to Bassano as owner and editor in the fall of 1926. When the Depression hit the country in the early 1930's, I was still in debt, and my newspaper business suffered severe losses. When my business collapsed, in the fall of 1934, I, with my wife and eighteen-months-old daughter, headed for British Columbia. When I came to Oliver in September that year, the town was small, the streets were not paved, and the sidewalks were made of wooden planks. But the countries of it was beautiful; the apple trees were loaded with fruit, agriculture under irrigation gave the economy a stable base, and there was a revival in gold mining. It looked like a good place to start a newspaper, and I decided to stay.