by John Dufort

My first contact with members of the Kitchener-Waterloo community was at the 1967 Ontario Regional Conference of Canadian University Press (CUP), held at the Walper Hotel in Kitchener. I was there as an employee of CUP and as a resource person, having been a staff member for a number of years at the McGill Daily in Montreal.

The conference was put on by members of the University of Waterloo’s student newspaper, The Chevron, and I remember them as hard partyers. Later, I was pleased to discover that many of them were also politically progressive.

Over the next few years, through extensive travel and regular attendance at annual CUP national conventions, I got to make friends with others from progressive student papers across the country. I especially remember the CUP Conferences in Toronto in 1968 and Waterloo in 1969, where friendship circles widened and solidified.

In the late 60s and early 70s, I lived in a co-op house in Montreal, and received many a visit from these new friends, and I of course visited them in their co-op houses as well. I visited the legendary 192 King Street more than once, and marvelled at the ideas and joyfulness around the place.

I was really drawn to the Kitchener community, but when at one point I decided to leave Montreal, finance considerations led me to accept a job at UBC’s student newspaper in Vancouver. Contact was not broken, however, and I remember going to a Grateful Dead concert (warmed up by Commander Cody) with Gary Robins and several other visiting friends at the Vancouver Arena.

Vancouver too popular

Vancouver was becoming an impossible place to live, housing-wise, what with people moving in from all over. Having made and saved a little money, I yearned to go to Europe. But nobody in B.C. ever talked about crossing the Atlantic, so I thought I’d build up my enthusiasm by moving back east, and took the opportunity to join my friends in Kitchener-Waterloo.

Dumont Press Graphix had recently gotten going, started in part by ex-members of the Chevron staff. A few people were thinking of starting a community newspaper, and since I was on Unemployment Insurance and didn’t need a job, I started helping out with that, and as an unofficial member of the Dumont staff. The paper, The Kitchener-Waterloo Free Press, was short-lived, but wove me more into the fabric of the community.

However, my desire to go to Europe persisted. And in 1975, I had a ticket to go. After a cross-Canada farewell tour, I ended up back in Kitchener.

The morning I was to leave for the airport (driven by Gary Robins), I went to Dumont to make my final goodbyes, and noticed the latest copy of The Chevron (which had been put together at the Shop the night before, and couldn’t help but notice the headline: Dufort Goes to Europe (finally), with a picture of me coming out of my favourite snack bar in Montreal with a Pepsi in one hand and a May West in the other. There was also a story (fictitious), written by Rosco Bell. A photo of the front and back pages of the paper can be seen in another upload.

I, of course, was completely shocked that they had put this rather “in” story on a paper that would be distributed all over the University of Waterloo campus - just because they were the typesetters. Well, it turned out that it was just a special run of a few copies, done for my benefit. I was really touched.

I was even more touched when I was presented with sets of business cards, one in English, but three others translated (badly as it turned out) into three different languages, French, Spanish, and German. I was to be the Overseas Representative of Dumont World Enterprises. I also got a box of cards identifying me as a journalist, in case that might help. This amazing gesture cemented in my mind my desire and intention to return after my year in Europe to a life in Kitchener and a job at my beloved Dumont Press Graphix.

Europe and back

I spent ten months zig-zagging around Europe, and found an inexpensive passage home in early December on the SS Stefan Batory, a Polish ocean liner making its last trip of the season back to Quebec City. My plans were to spend Christmas with my mom and family in Montreal, and then proceed to Kitchener to see if I could get on staff at Dumont.

As it turned out, the annual CUP Conference was being held in Montreal over Christmas, so I dropped in to see who I knew. It turns out I knew lots of folks, including a contingent from Kitchener as well as one from Regina. I remember a great New Year’s Eve dance at the Students Union, followed by a “scoff” with eight or ten friends in Chinatown.

By that time, I’d already succumbed to the charms of an attractive woman who I had met at a previous CUP Conference, and she was working on me to go to Regina (where I had a number of friends) to “save the Students Union” from financial ruin and trusteeship at the hands of the University there. In the end, I promised her three months to go in, see what I could do, and turn things around if I could. So I went, and in three months, after having successfully turned the organization around, I was back in Kitchener.

I did indeed get on at Dumont, and also lived in a couple of interesting places during my time there. I am an alumnus of the House of Zonk and its city cousin, “Lanc”. But that’s another story…

I worked at Dumont for two years, during which several of my KW friends moved away, some of them to Regina, of all places. So when I got a call that my old job at the University of Regina was again available, and this time it would be “smooth sailing”, I decided to return to Saskatchewan, where I ended up living (both fulltime and later part time) until the present.

I have attended all the Dumont reunions I was able to get to. A few were not possible because of work. But they have been a good way to keep up with this wonderful community I have been so warmly welcomed into.

I am presently retired, and splitting my time between Regina, Montreal, and Puerto Escondido Mexico (which I have been visiting for over 25 years). My profile photo was taken on my 75th birthday at the Hotel Ben-Zaa in lovely Puerto Escondido.

Staff meeting at Dumont... a really energetic crew. From left to right: Jane Harding, John Dufort, Michael Kelly, Lake Sagaris, and Kae Elgie.

In my life, when I got all riled up about a situation or issue (to the point of not being able to sleep at night), I often resorted to writing what would be likened to a “rant”, expressing the raw feelings I was having. Putting everything that was going around in my head down on paper allowed me to emotionally detach from it at least somewhat.

I present one such document (see below), garnered from the Dumont archives. As one can gather from reading it, there were philosophical divisions going on among the staff, and the direction and viability of the operation was centerpoint.

I was probably off-base in some of my assertions. For example, Dumont was able to continue to make a “contribution to progressive movements”, not least of which by being involved in the establishment of Between the Lines publishing house. But the need for the operation to become more productive continued to plague Dumont (see Alison Stirling’s “Remembering… 1979-80” and Cheryl Hendrickson’s “Class of ‘86”) to the end.

Though connected to Dumont for a long time previously, I became an actual staff member, I believe, in the fall of 1976. As stated in the document, I wrote the list of reasons why I did so in May 1977, and the rest of the piece in April 1978, after which I presented it to a staff meeting.

I was lured back to a job in Regina later that year.

In retrospect, I ended up getting a lot out of Dumont - technical skills, experience working in a collective environment, life-long friends. In fact, a couple of my friends, Gary Robins and Rosco Bell, had preceded me to Regina. I continued to be in touch with people from my days in Kitchener-Waterloo, and have attended as many reunions as I could. I’ve got to say the extended Dumont community molded my life.

John Dufort's video from the 2000 Dumont Reunion can be seen at You Tube Dumont Reunion 2000. Click on it to play the video. Excuse the rough quality... it was old analog technology transfered to digital.