It is an English proverb about that well running dry.  It is not from one the great English poets or diarists or anything like it. It is just an expression that is an obvious truth, and it is a phrase that you have certainly heard before. In its full form it is, “You don’t miss the water till the well runs dry.” I use that phrase to describe my thoughts on the recently departed daily print edition of The Telegram. I wasn’t a fan of the paper particularly. I read it with a critical eye, but I was a subscriber. I have been for years. I knew all its faults, but I was still a faithful reader and buyer. You may find this a strange observation, but I found The Telegram to be a “stabilising” factor in my life. I would look at the Telegram’s headlines every day and flip on at a first glance until I got to the obits. I read the obits with an eye on the important observation as to whether I knew anyone there. The other thing I watched was whether “the dearly departed” were older or younger than me. That little exercise plus a cup of coffee was the framework for the start of my day for the past decade or so since I stepped down from the front lines of broadcast news. The Telegram was very much a part of my day. 

There was almost a religious aspect to it and as in any religious matter the idea of “ritual” is part of it. I picked up the paper early each morning from my mailbox. I live in a rural area and The Telegram was hand-delivered each day. The mailbox is at the end of a long dirt driveway about sixty or seventy yards in length. The delivery was excellent, but I still had to go get the paper. I would do that as early as five- thirty or six in the morning. The Telegram was always there and for me going to get it was part of my day. That was for me the first taste of the morning and the new day given to me. If it was raining, I got wet. If it was snowing, I had to slog through it and make a first blush plan for shovelling. 

The best mornings were in the Fall. The air was crisp and usually cool. That air was filled with what is called in those lovely outdoors English magazines “birdsong.” The saddest sound of the morning is that of a loon on the pond below our house. I have observed before that I bet Hank Williams knew that sound. The Telegram took me to those mornings in any season on a regular basis and now it will no longer accompany me. I will not go to the end of the driveway at that hour anymore. There is no Telegram to coax me out there and lead me into my new day.   

Now I know on a practical, non-romantic level that the end of The Telegram had to be. The computer screen rules the world now. People don’t get their information from print like they used to. It isn’t just The Telegram that found the going tough. I worked for three different print publications over the years but they, including The Newfoundland Herald, are gone. This humble offering I write is for the “online Newfoundland Herald.” It is the way the world is.  

I have been around The Evening Telegram for a long time. My parents were Telegram readers. That was seventy years ago. I was a reader. I remember reading Wick Collins and Ray Guy and the other op/ed writers. I loved opinion. I still read opinion in The Globe and Mail and The New York Times. Still, readership in all print publications “skews” old. My three boys do all their reading, or almost all of it, online.  

None of that keeps me from looking back fondly over my shoulder to the good old days when The Telegram brought me local sports from the Commercial League of hockey or the bowling results from St. Pats or Holy Cross alleys or the soccer scores from the Ayre Athletic or Feildian Grounds. I miss it all. I miss Harold Horwood’s pen and Bernie Bennett’s court coverage. I miss Joe Walsh’s work and all the rest of them. They all told the story of my city.  

The Telegram took me from childhood to the world of adults. In recent years it took me out to my mailbox and the new morning. While I understand the economics of it and the idea of “time passing”, there is still in the folding of the printed Evening Telegram a sadness in it all. 

You can contact Jim Furlong at [email protected]