User:Thebeaconherald

The Beacon Herald, as are many other newspapers in the country, is an amalgamation of two daily newspapers, The Beacon and The Herald.

BEACON 1954 The Beacon was first published by Peter Eby as a weekly in 1854. Mr. Eby, who was only 26 years old at the time, was the son on Benjamin Eby, the first bishop of the Mennonite Church in Upper Canada. He founded the settlements of Ebytown in 1807 that was later called Berlin and during the First World War had its name changed to Kitchener.

Mr. Eby was a Grit and The Beacon was established as a Reform newspaper and its earliest campaigns were directed toward the secularization of the clergy reserves, which brought religious freedom and laid the basics of our educational system to be open to rich and poor alike. The Beacon also campaigned for fair political recognition in the form of representation by population.

HERALD 1863 This reform or Grit viewpoint was not to go unchallenged for very long. Samuel Vivian established the County of Perth Electioneering Monitor in 1863 for present the conservative, or Tory, viewpoint. He soon changed the name to The Herald. A lively political rivalry existed between the two newspapers for 60 years until economic reality forced them to join forces.

DINGMANS - 1886 In 1886 my great-grandfather, Absalom Dingman and his sons came to Stratford from Strathroy and purchased The Herald. They turned it into a daily in 1887. The rival Beacon got wind of the Herald’s impending move and beat The Herald to the punch by putting out a daily paper three days before The Herald. The Beacon could not maintain the daily pace and reverted to a weekly until 1891 when it became a daily on a sustained basis.

At least three of Absalom’s sons were involved in The Herald. One of them, Charles O.J. Dingman, was the grandfather of Chuck Dingman, the last member of the Dingman family to be involved in the newspaper. Charles O.J. Dingman died in 1922. Another was W.S. Dingman who was an editor and publisher of The Herald. In the early 1900s he was mayor of Stratford and he was also organist of Central United Church for a period around the turn of the century.

L.H. DINGMAN A third son, L.H. Dingman, eventually gained control of The Herald. When he learned that The Beacon had been sold to W.J. Taylor, publisher of the Woodstock paper he hurried to Woodstock and negotiated the purchase of the Beacon with Mr. Taylor. It took L.H. three hours and a bonus of $5,000 to clinch the deal with Mr. Taylor who was sick in bed at the time. He quick quickly amalgamated the two Stratford papers to form The Beacon Herald in 1923.

For a period of more than 30 years, from 1891 until 1923, Stratford supported two competing daily newspapers.

L.H. Dingman, besides owning The Beacon Herald, also owned the St. Thomas Times-Journal until his death in 1952.

The Dingman family was involved in publishing The Beacon Herald for 75 years and involved in publishing a newspaper in Stratford for 115 years.

PAPER TODAY In August of 1999 The Beacon Herald was sold to Bowes Publishing, a subsiduary of Sun Media, which in turn was owned by Quebecor, the largest printing company in the world.

In 2001, The Beacon Herald operations were consolidated under one roof, at the current location which is at the corners of Packham Road and Erie Street in the city’s south end.