Homecoming for the first issue of the Manitoban
Pages from U of M’s history only cost 25 cents
Robert Ballantyne, Staff
Photo by Robert Ballantyne
They say you can’t buy anything worthwhile with pocket change, but Hank Byoholt managed to buy a piece of U of M student history for just a quarter.
Byoholt, 55, a retired University College supervisor, was out shopping for his wife’s birthday when he decided to stop at a garage sale along Henderson Highway.
“I collect records and I always go to garage sales,” Byoholt said. “I noticed there were some books [at the garage sale], so I started going through the books, lookin’ and lookin,’ and all of a sudden I came across the Manitoban.”
And not just any copy of the Manitoban, but the very first issue ever printed.
“I looked at the date — volume one, number one,” he said. “November 5, 1914.”
Byoholt decided to take the issue, unaware of the significance of what he had just found, along with a bunch of pocket books, and headed over to pay for his finds.
“I went to the cashier, the one who was running the yard sale, and I said ‘How much?’ and she said ‘25 cents each.’ I said, ‘Okay, great!’ I think it worked out to $2.50.”
The issue remained in Byoholt’s possession for about three months before he decided to donate it to the Manitoban — no strings attached.
“When I bought [the first issue of the Manitoban], I looked through it, I read it,” Byoholt said. “Then I put it somewhere and forgot about it for a while. I found it again recently and decided that you guys could probably use it.”
For the curious, the first incarnation of the Manitoban, which will be available to read on our website (Download PDF, 11.2MB), was originally conceived as a bi-monthly glossy magazine.
Published by the “students of the University of Manitoba,” the magazine featured a profile of current president Dr. James A. MacLean, sections on athletics, theology, arts and science, and a women’s sports section titled “The College Girl.”
The introductory editorial referred to Canada as a “great Empire” and described how the Manitoban was hoped to be a “powerful unifying force” to promote “a broad university spirit.”
It continued: “The Manitoban is a journal for all University men and women. The artist and the athlete, the poet and the preacher, the doctor, the druggist, the lawyer and the engineer — each has his part in the college life, and each has his contribution to make to the University journal.
“The graduate, too, carried back to those fabulous days in the eighties and nineties, from which time has effaced all but the romantic, the ideal -- will find recorded within its covers the triumphs of his classmates; and in the light of his mature experience will foreshadow the victories and defeats of his younger brothers and sisters.
“In introducing the Manitoban, therefore, as the magazine of the University of Manitoba, we claim for it the support of all our college men, old and new.”
In the first issue, subscriptions were available for $1, which, when multiplied by the cost of inflation, would cost $18.03 today.
