Owen Sound's First Newspaper: The Comet

Owen Sound's First Newspaper: The Comet came into existence a mere 10 years after the first settlers braved the wilderness that would become the Grey and Bruce region.

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Over the course of the last 150 years this region enjoyed news coverage by a number of Owen Sound newspapers.

The first was the Comet. Today, the Sun Times exists as result of the many hard working and dedicated newspersons whose newspapers, through one means or another, became part of the product which we read.

But only a decade before the Comet emerged as the first newspaper in Grey and Bruce there were very few people living in this area. In fact, it was a notice issued by Governor Sullivan on November 1, 1840 which announced that Owen Sound was opened for settlement.

I am often asked how the early settlers acquired land here in the first place.

On May 18, 1843, John Davidson, the commissioner of Crown lands, issued a notice entitled "For the Guidance of Persons Desirous of Settling at the Owen Sound Settlement."

Davidson's proclamation began:

"Notice is hereby given, that a road through the Crown Land from the North West angle of the Township of Garafraxa to Owen's Sound, upon Lake Huron, is opening at the expense of the Government. Lots of 50 acres of land each will be laid out on each side of the road."

Settlers who had never obtained a grant of land previously from the government were eligible as long as they met several conditions.

First, the settlers could seek the land from a Crown land agent when they were ready to move to that land.

Secondly, they had to prove that they had the means to survive until their first crops were harvested. If they met the criteria, they were given a ticket entitling them to move to the tract of land.

After receiving the ticket to locate on the land, the prospective settler had one month to move to his new property. If he failed to move within that month or left the land for any reason, he lost his claim to the land.

The settler was required to clear one third of the land on his property and plant crops. Once he had met this obligation he was entitled to his patent on the land without any cost.

If for some reason a settler found it necessary to leave his land for an extended period, he had to make application to the land agent. If the reason was deemed valid, the agent would allow the settler to leave for a short period of time. But this was only in very extenuating circumstances.

If a settler tried to sell his land or assign it to someone else the land agent could step in and order the settler off the land and give it to another prospective settler.

The criteria listed above was the process that most of the early settlers to our region followed when they decided to move to the Owen Sound area.

By the time the first newspaper appeared in Owen Sound, many settlers had met the criteria and owned their land free and clear.

Although life was still a hard struggle the emergence of newspapers in the early 1850s perhaps illustrates two things about the community.

One, the region had grown sufficiently that there were enough businesses to support newspapers through advertising and secondly, that the citizens of the area wanted to be able to read the news of their district and the world beyond.

The information used in this article came from documents held in the Grey County Archives.

A version of this article originally appeared in my Local History column in the Owen Sound Sun Times on March 8, 2002.

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