Louis Blake Duff

The composite man

{Port Colborne, 1959 Privately printed for George H. Smith}

But what of Louis Blake Duff himself? He was born in Bluevale, a village in Huron County near Wingham, on January 1, 1878. He was named Louis by his mother after Louis Riel, and Blake by his father, an ardent Grit and follower of Edward Blake. A period as schoolteacher(1896 to 1900) was followed by a stint as reporter on The Wingham Times, The Stratford Beacon and The Galt Reporter under J.P. Jaffray, where he had as colleague J. Herbert Cranston, for ,many years editor of the Star Weekly in Toronto. “Louis Blake Duff,” says Herbert Cranston in his autobiography, Ink on My Fingers, “began his career as a schoolteacher, but after four years of verbally admonishing the young, and a few years at research for a shorthand expert in the city of Toronto, was invited by Blake Elliott of The Wingham Times to manage his weekly temporarily.”

Duff tells it this way:

“I took  the first train so as not to give him a chance to change his mind, for I longed to get on a newspaper. I was in full charge from Easter to Labor Day, when – Blake returned. I wrote the news, the editorials, and most of the advertisements. I read proofs, edited the country correspondence, collected the bills, and even pulled the lever of the Washington hand press. By Labor Day I knew all about every phase of newspaper work and more.

“Then I went to The Stratford Beacon, owned in those days by W.M. O’Beirne. He was a short-sighted man who wore thick glasses and could not see what a jewel he had. I heard J.P. Jaffray of The Galt Reporter calling and moved to Galt the day of Queen Victoria’s funeral, lightening the gloom of the town’s official mourning. Four years of unalloyed happiness followed. I really learned something from Jaffray. I never knew anyone who ate, drank and slept his town like J.P.- Galt was the centre of the universe. He knew all the Galtonians who had gone to the four corners of the earth and were making names for themselves. Every step they made up the ladder was a joy to him.

“But one day Tom Sears, who once owned a share in The Galt Reporter, came to town and suggested that I go to Welland and edit the Telegraph, which his son Frank was running for him. Six months after I landed, on January 1, 1905, I went into partnership with Frank Sears. We bought the plant for $10,000, mostly on wind. Two years later Frank took ill, and I bought him out with more wind. The Lord tempered the two gales to the shorn lamb and I survived.

“The Welland Telegraph episode lasted for 21 years, and was very happy and even successful in a way. But in October of 1926 a big car filled with lawyers arrived town. They coveted my paper, and, at 3 o’clock that afternoon, I was sitting out on the curb, unemployed for the first time in half a century.

But Duff was not long idle. He organized, conducted and eventually sold the Niagara Finance Co. Ltd. and assembled one of the finest private libraries on the development of printing and the press. He wrote or compiled pamphlets and books bearing the imprint of The Baskerville Press, his own venture, and in The County Kerchief dealt with the history of capital punishment.

At no period did business absorb all his time, although he worked long hours when necessary. In his Galt days- 1900 to 1904—he played soccer. The Galt club then held the intermediate championship of Ontario. He was a member of a team that toured the Canadian West; the Galt players won 21 games and were tied once. In 1904, as manager, he took the Galt team to the St Louis World’s Fair. On the return trip the team faced an all-star Chicago team and defeated it by a score of 3 to 0.

In the same year he was nominated to the executive of the Ontario Hockey Association. As Duff describes it: “It was like a bolt from the blue. A telegram from Niagara Falls, where the annual meeting of the OHA was being held, stated that I had been nominated to the executive by the president, John Ross Robertson.” After that Duff served in various capacities, including the presidency, which he held for two years.

Early in life he took an interest in local history, especially in the history of the Niagara Peninsula. As secretary of the Welland Historical Society for 20 years, he edited and supervised the publication of its volumes. Twice he was president of the Ontario Historical Society, and for the past quarter-century he has been a member of the executive.

For more than half a lifetime, say 40 years, Louis Blake Duff has been a public speaker. He can think of no Canadian city except Charlottetown where he has not addressed an audience. Speaking engagements in the United States have taken him to Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Jamestown, Erie, Cincinnati, Ann Arbor, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Chicago, Kansas City, and St Louis. He has been an adjudicator of the Governor-General’s Awards for literature off and on since they were initiated by Lord  Tweedsmuir.

His printed addresses include Cabbages and Kings, The Immortal Memory: Robert Burns, and An Appreciation of Stephen Leacock. Among the books he has written and published under the imprint of the Baskerville Press are The Life of Colonel Fred Burnaby, the story of a most remarkable English soldier and world traveler; Crowland: a Story of the Ancient Abbey; Muddiman, the King’s Journalist; Jane Susan Duff: Her Book, a pretty piece of the bookman’s art, illustrated by Gerrond Duff and the County Kerchief, an excursion into the macabre. John D. Robins made a place for him in his anthology of Canadian Humorous Poetry. Arthur Meighen’s moving address to the Canadian Club of Toronto on The Greatest Englishman of History was later published in an attractive format and type dress with a preface by Sir Robert Falconer and a biographical sketch of the speaker by Duff.

As a writer he has contributed papers to foreign as well as native periodicals. Early Canadian Travel Books, dealing with the Jesuit Relations, appeared in the Philobiblion of Vienna, a publication devoted entirely to the printing press and its productions. In 1933 he wrote The Journey of the Printing Press Across Canada for the Gutenberg Jahrbuch of Mainz, Germany. He wrote From Joss House to Olympia, a life of W.H. Davies, the poet, for the Colophon of New York. And a year later he wrote for the same publication The Life of Sebastian Cramoisy, printer of the Jesuit Relations.

When the Welland Little Theatre was organized in 1945, he acted as treasurer for two years and served on the board of advisers. A one-act play of Duff’s, When the Bough Breaks, was produced at a Niagara Peninsula drama festival. He is a life member of the Canadian Red Cross and was president for several years of the local branch. He is an honorary member of the Welland County Children’s Aid Society, and was until lately an active member of the Welland Rotary Club, the Welland Board of Trade and the YMCA.

In the late 1920’s he acquired a large property in the St John’s Shorthills, north of Fonthill, which he called Cooneen Cross and developed into one of the showplaces in the Niagara district, if not indeed in Canada. Upon the death of his wife a few years ago, he disposed of this parkland to A.C. Scott, an architect.

He acknowledges that the greatest distinction that has come to him was the conferring on him by the University of Western Ontario in 1952 of the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws.

Dr. G. Edward Hall, president of the university, concluded his presentation address by saying: “It is this composite man to whom the university wishes to pay tribute: a true scholar, an eminent historian, a dignified compatriot, an inimitable humorist, and a solid citizen of this country.”