TWENTY YEARS OF THE BNS NEWSLETTER

by Larry Bogan
Cambridge Station, N.S.

This is Issue #1 of Volume 21 of the BNS Newsletter and marks two decades of continuous publication. On the cover of Issue #1 of Volume 1 is a sketch of mine of Cape Blomidon. I have worked on the BNS Newsletter in different capacities to the present.day and in this anniversary issue felt it might be interesting to review the historical development of the Newsletter. The past issues of the Newsletter contain the a history of the activities of the society and will leave that reading to you; here, I will only recount my view of the production of the Newsletter over the years.

I have searched my memories and scanned my nearly-complete collection of Newsletters to find statistics,f acts, and anecdotes that might be of interest to the reader. Although the Newsletter has always been published on the equinoxes and the solstices, in the formative years four newsletters were not always printed. The Society did not exist until March of 1974 so Volume #1 did not start until September and had only two issues. Issues 3 and 4 of Volume 5 were published as one Newsletter along with issue #1 of Volume 6. Issues #3 and #4 of Volume 6 will be found in one Newsletter also. Those were in the years of 1978-79 which were difficult years for the society.

The initial format of the Newsletter was on 8-1/2"x14" (legal size) paper printed on both sides. The text was typed onto Gestetner masters (usually with a manual typewriter)and the drawings were "scratched" into the masters with a stylus. If a mistake were made, it had to be painted over with a bright orange correction fluid very much like nail polish. Roy Bishop and I scratched many a drawing on those masters and I have to admit, Roy had a fine technique in this medium, one I could not match. Twila Robar-Decosta was the artist on issue #3 of volume 9 and did an excellent job of scratching on the gestetner stencil. Most of you know Twila is the artist that created the drawings in the "Natural History of Kings County".

Roy Bishop and Jean Timpa were the first editors and I think Jean used to do most of the typing. Besides making illustrations, I would get my fingers black with printing ink and exercise my arm by turning the Gestetner printer handle. Gestetners were motor driven but I seldom trusted them on automatic because as soon as I did, it would mis-feed the paper, wrinkle the stencil or jam. Quite a few sheets could be destroyed before one managed to stop the machine. Since the printing had to be on both sides, one had to be careful not to damage too many sheets when printing on the second side. I know of at least one issue that had one page printed upside down and it stayed that way. It was a difficult and messy task to put a used, wet stencil back on the machine without a wrinkle.

Today, if we are shy a few copies of the Newsletter for mailing, we just photocopy some more. With the Gestetner copies, only once did I try to put the used stencils back on to make more copies, something I dreaded. Imagine handling several Iong, flimsy, black sheets that have to be attached to the drum at one end and wrapped smoothly over a drum covered with thick, black ink used to produce the newsletter. This device copies black and white sheets of text and drawings onto gestetner stencils photoelectrically. The master and a special stencil are put on co-rotating drums; when a black area on the master is detected by a photo sensor, a corresponding area of the stencil is burned through with an electrical spark. The typing pool at Acadia had one and we used it extensively to improve the appearance of the Newsletter. Ink drawings could be reproduced faithfully with only a small decrease in the quality of the text.

The early Newsletters had 6 cents postage stamps on them. Photocopying existed bul printing by Gestetner was less expensive. In those days, we were allowed to fold the newsletters in half, staple them shut, and put the address and postage on the back sheet. No wonder, we were able to put out four newsletters a year for a membership fee of only $2. I remember many days at Jean Timpa's kitchen table with other BNS members addressing newsletters and wetting stamps. In 1983 Brenda Thexton and Lana Churchill began doing this and
they're still at it.

The Newsletter has had a series of editors and co-editors. From my records, the list is as
follows:

• 1974-1980 Jean Timpa and Roy Bishop
• 1980-1981 Jean Timpa and Larry Bogan
• 1981-1982 Jean Timpa
• 1982-1983 Jean Timpa and Lynn Coldwell
• 1984 Jean Timpa and Larry Bogan
• 1985-1993 George and Margaret Alliston
• 1993 Merritt Gibson
• 1994 Mark Elderkin

1984 was a year of significant change in production of the Newsletter. That year, I purchased my first word processor for the Commodore 64, and used it to enter and correct text electronically, before printing it. The final issue that year was the first in the present "folded" format and the first printed in the Acadia
University print shop. It was still on the legal sized paper but sideways. There was one more "Gestetnered'' newsletter before turning all printing over to the Ron Bezanson and his crew in the printshop. Earlier in the year, Jim Wolford, contributed his first "Trivial Tidbits of Natural History" which has continued in every issue to present. Reports of field trips have been in the Newsletter ever since the first Society field trip.

In 1985, the Newsletter shrank to its present paper size and the type was reduced to put more text in the smaller area. The lay out of the newsletter had to be 33% larger than its final size because it was reduced by 3/4 before the copy ready version was sent to the print shop. This was confusing for many involved including the production manager. Four pages, in pairs, had to be placed back to back on a single sheet in the correct order for the sequence to be right in the final, assembled Newsletter. All this made for more tedious production. In the same year, long-time editor Jean Timpa turn over her editorship to George and Margaret Alliston. The text was now entirely handled by computer and the pictures, now cleverly drawn by Mary Pratt, were pasted into spaces generated by the word processor.

In 1991 desktop publishing was first used to layout the Newsletter and to import, size and place pictures.This software allowed the format to be changed to two columns of text on the page with slightly larger print. In this same year two issues had 52 pages, the largest BNS Newsletters published.

PRODUCTION OF THE NEWSLETTER TODAY [1994]

At the present time, the majority of the contributors to the newsletter compose on a computer and most text arrives in the editor's hands on magnetic disk. The editor edits and arranges-the material and copies the text files on a magnetic disk (at present in a WordPerfect format). This is passed onto me while a printed copy is given to Mary Pratt to read and create appropriate drawings. When I receive Mary's drawings, scan them photo electronically and store the images on a magnetic disk. If special diagrams are needed, I can scan the original, modify it or create a new one with a drawing software. I assemble the entire newsletter using the desktop publishing software called "Publish It!". This software enables me to "flow" the text into columns and frames that can be sized and moved around the page. Many different type styles (fonts) are available to make the Newsletter fancy but the better layouts are the ones using only one or two fonts. The font can be changed in size or made bold or italics for emphasis. The drawings are imported into frames in the same manner as the text. I can scale the drawings to the sizes needed and add a captions. The text flows around the drawings automatically. Finally, the newsletter is printed with a laser printer in its final size. The pages are assembled in the required sequence of groups of four to make a copy ready Newsletter before delivering to Ron Bezanson at the print shop.

The BNS newsletter has undergone several facelifts over the years and is undoubtedly prettier than it once was. It is, however, the content that is important and as a member of the Newsletter Committee, I hope the Society continues to find the Newsletter a useful and informative vehicle of communication.