Lethbridge Herald AB

Alberta had sported its status as a Canadian province for just over two months when the Lethbridge Herald first appeared. It was autumn 1905 and Lethbridge was a mining town of about 3,000 people already being served by the Lethbridge News, which had just begun daily publication after 20 years as a weekly paper. Two Cranbrook men, Fred E.Simpson and A.S. Bennett, introduced the Lethbridge Weekly Herald, which published its first issue Nov. 8, 1905.  Its first home was in a building that used to house a Chinese laundry on what is now 5 Street South. An editorial in the first issue carried a proclamation that remains a part of The Herald’s editorial page: “As long as there is paste in its pot or lead in its pencil, The Herald will bow to no one and endeavor to do justice to all. It will spare no effort to obtain legitimate news from whatever source it might come.” 

The debut issue also featured a story about a CPR survey being carried out with an eye toward the building of a new railway bridge spanning the river valley. Today the High Level Bridge is a nationally recognized historic structure. Shortly before The Herald’s birth, a young newspaperman from Ontario arrived in Lethbridge on a bleak, blustery October day. William Asbury Buchanan visited Calgary, where he made an unsuccessful attempt to purchase an interest in a newspaper called the Albertan.  He also failed in a bid to land a job with the Edmonton Bulletin. He returned to Lethbridge, which had not provided Buchanan with a favourable first impression, with a chinook kicking up dust and debris.