Just found some of my old Fake Letterheads.
Best of all is the Northern Ontario Railroad's.
Make-believe railroad chairman J. Clarence Muirhead regularly sent out mock press releases on budget nights. He was a pretend railroad magnate.
Back in the '70s, newspapers and the CBC needed next-day reaction after federal or provincial budgets came out, ditto for reaction to Throne Speeches.
Mr. Muirhead provided them.
J. Clarence, who may have worked at the Star, used a nearby copy shop to fish the Globe, Telegram and CBC. He'd send them his realistic press release facsimiles.
"This budget can be interpreted many ways," JCM once wrote. "I believe northern Ontario may benefit from incentives. But does Ottawa really have a grip on the possible effect?"
Sure enough, Muirhead's quote would surface in a budget roundup story near the end, after a jump to an inside page. Usually verbatim.
Muirhead's talent was to be blandly quotable, but not crazy.
His quote was as good as the dozens of public relations squibs faxed and courier'd to newsrooms for reaction stories. J. Clarence passed in a crowd.
Nobody ever said: Hey. This Muirhead guy. Is this Northern Ontario railroad the same as Ontario Northland? Never.
Alas, overconfidence killed the cat.
J. Clarence Muirhead came across a beautiful 8x10 black and white travel glossy of deer crossing a snowy Scandinavian railroad track on a Star desk. It was a great photo. Just laying on a desk. Swoop, gone.
By morning, the same pic had a nice new caption professionally folded to it.
"Deer cross Northern Ontario Railroad tracks near Pickle Lake, Ontario as winter arrives," it read. "Herds are common at this time of year, as they travel and seek cold weather yards."
Next, a plain brown envelope.
But only one pic! Who to send it to? One potato, two potato, three potato, four....
The envelope went to the Telegram from the CBC's favorite mail drop, Terminal A. Big. Familiar. A lot of corporate mail moves there.
A week later--a Monday--I arrive at the Star to major hub bub. Muirhead's deer-on-tracks photo is on page 12 of the first edition of the Toronto Telegram.
This is three years before the Sun is born.
The Star suspects the photo is fake. So does the Tely. Those are not just deer or caribou ... they are reindeer. Does Canada have reindeer? The photo appears to be Norway or Finland.
The hunt for J. Clarence begins.
Where is this Pickle Lake? 550 km north of Thunder Bay. Is there a railroad? Is it the Northern Ontario Railroad?
No such railroad runs from Thunder Bay to Pickle Lake. Oh oh. And the only reindeer in Canada are in the NWT. Whoops. The pic runs in just that first Telegram edition. Replate!
Years later, I hear that Tely day side loved the photo so much, they tried to reach Muirhead for a story the next morning. They were unsuccessful.
J. Clarence died that day.
But not his letterhead.
The Canadian Aluvium Corporation was popular in press coverage of the annual Miners Week that filled the Royal York, too. It was always discovering new deposits in Zambia.
Never fooled the Northern Miner tho.
So many weird penny stock mining companies prowled Canadian markets. Why not one more?
Aluvium is the mud at river deltas. Hey, I took Geography 101. I know what a drumlin is too.
But I never found a use for the Toronto Brain Farm letterhead. Might it be useful for those big Future Think confabs Big Government and Moses Znaimer host?
Now, who is TS Messy?
What's his deal?
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