The Neepawa Press, telling Neepawa’s story since 1896

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Published on Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Photo courtesy of the Beautiful Plains Archives. Prior to moving into the building on Mountain Ave, the Neepawa Press occupied one of these buildings on Hamilton St, where Neepawa Home Hardware now sits.  This photo is believed to have been taken in 1933.

By Kira Paterson

Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press

The Neepawa Press has been publishing newspapers for 119 years now; it’s the oldest business in Neepawa that is still running today.

It was established in May of 1896 by Alexander Dunlop as a weekly eight page newspaper. Soon after, it expanded to 16 pages, with the first half being released on Wednesdays and the second coming out on Saturdays. In 1901, the Neepawa Press officially became a semi-weekly paper, coming out every Tuesday and Thursday. It has since returned to being a weekly paper coming out every Wednesday. 

Alexander Dunlop died in 1930, leaving the business to his sons Blake and Wilfred. Two years later, the building at 423 Mountain Avenue, in which the paper had been located until September of 2015, was built and the paper moved in. Before that building, it had been located on Hamilton Street, in a building that is now part of Home Hardware. 

The building had been constructed specifically for the Neepawa Press, with local businesses supplying much of the labour and materials. It contains five concrete pillars and two concrete piers in the basement to support all the heavy printing machinery that was on the main floor. There was also a brick vault built into the basement to store copies of every issue of the paper. The space was equipped with that day’s most current production equipment and utilities. Some of the old equipment used in 1932 is still in the building, such as their Model 19 Linotype, which is too heavy to be removed by hand.

The newspaper was produced on site until 1974. When the business first started, and for several decades after, the printing methods involved placing metal letters into a form by hand and printing the pages with manually operated presses. In 1974, the page layout was done in the building, but the printing of the distributed papers moved to Brandon. 

After Alexander Dunlop died, Wilfred and Blake Dunlop ran the business until 1946. It then went to S. James Dempsey, who owned it for two years before being succeeded by W.H. Vopni in 1948. The Neepawa Press changed hands several times within the next 20 years after that. Some of the owners included Vic O’Neill, William Portman, A.F. McKenzie, Jennifer Sladek, George Smellie and Bill Peters. Jack Huxley and John Oslund purchased the business in 1968 after being co-managers for 13 years before that. In 1988, it was purchased by Jack Gibson and Ewan Pow of Sundance Publications from Huxley and Oslund. In 2008, the company was sold to Glacier Media, who owned it until Ken and Christine Waddell purchased it on Sept. 2 of this year, bringing it back to local hands. 

Photo by Kira Paterson. This plaque commemorating Neepawa Press founder Alexander Dunlop hangs inside the doorway in the Neepawa Press Building.

Correction:

In the Oct. 14, 2015 edition of the Neepawa Press, the article mentioned a few names that were implied as owners of the business. Vic O’Neill, William Portman, A.F. McKenzie, Jennifer Sladek, George Smellie and Bill Peters were not owners, but editors for the paper while it was under ownership of W.H. Vopni. It didn’t change owners again until it was purchased by Jack Huxley and John Oslund.