More on the Dumont Archives

I’ll briefly give some background to what’s happened to various artifacts of Dumont Press Graphix.

While actual commercial operations finished in April 1987, Brian Cere, Paul Hartford, and I continued renting the space until sometime around 1995, mostly for photography projects, although I continued to do a little bit of typesetting for various non-profit groups. At that point, we moved all the leftover Dumont stuff (camera and darkroom equipment, two presses, at least one VIP, shelves, desks, and all the archives and records) to the Waterloo Community Arts Centre (the Button Factory) on Regina St. in Waterloo.

Alan Rimmer and I then started to plan to set the printing and camera equipment up as a kind of graphic arts workshop within the Centre, but the basement space allotted to us ended up unuseable after the Fire Department declared it too dangerous (insufficient exit opportunities) for people to work in.

Everything stayed there for years, mostly dormant, but every so often Alan, Roddy, or myself would go down to either to clean and sort things out a bit and to retrieve something we thought important. Both Roddy and I fished out most of the historical records, such as payroll books, legal papers, and logbooks, and took them home. Rych mills also took an interest in the material and tried to encourage archivists from the University of Waterloo Library to accept the records and many of the publications into one of their collections.

Then one day about four years ago, Alan, rych, Roddy, and I went down there to do a major move of the material to space offered by the Waterloo Historical Society — only to discover that almost all the archives, cabinets, and shelving had disappeared. Something of scene then ensued when I confronted the guy in charge, who admitted they had recycled most of the magazines and newspapers on one of their weekend volunteer cleanups.

Two years ago, after Roddy died, we retrieved the records he had been interested in (mostly logbooks from the time he spent at Dumont). Last year Alan, rych, and I moved all the remaining printed materials to the WHS storage space, except for a couple of boxes of business records, including the logbooks, that I’m keeping at home.

I hadn’t looked at the logbooks in years, even though I never forgot the original entries that I quoted in my earlier blog. The first book, dated January to April 1972, not only reminded me of who was working that first year, but also fairly clearly describes the difficulties experienced by largely unskilled typographers who refused to let responsibilities migrate away from the collective to individuals. This meant, fundamentally, that when things didn’t get done or were done poorly, it became a public issue. The logbook no doubt reflects the details and tone of the “criticism/self-criticism” struggles within production meetings.

So, for example:

[Monday morning shift, 24 January, unsigned] Let’s talk about who works at 6AM -> this is a shitty shift & why is it always the same people. Discussion -> responsibility of shift to finish their work. Layout shift should do layout not proofread, corrections etc.
LOTS OF HASSLES!!

[12:30 p.m. Monday shift, 24 January, unsigned] (1) Some proofing was not done — there was a hassle about proofing & the proofing was very disorganized and we had a lot of corrections to do after paste-up.

[2:30 a.m.(?) Tuesday, 25 January, DM] [various details about Chevron copy] If Dumont ever works as a co-operative David [Monoogian?] is going to will his first million to it that he saved out of his salary.

[6:40 Feb. 16, EH] Everyones left. I just got off the phone ready to leave but first I had to turn of one computer, two perferators, one headliner, one camera timer, close up one camera back, turn of darkroom lights, etc. Really now — isn’t this a bit ridiculous!

Cleanliness was another big issue:

[Feb. 18, unsigned] Thurs. shifts didn’t clean up their dishes after their shifts and its really a drag to come face to face with 3" of sludge!

Does anyone remember what this was about?

[Mar.7/72 6:00 p.m., Rod] As of now I am on strike!

It wasn’t a joke, apparently, as this note followed immediately:

[TC] I suggest you write down the reasons why and talk to people as a group soon probably before the next meeting.

But the vast majority of entries express relief at getting work done (often at 6:00 a.m., which was the deadline for getting negatives to the printers), and more-or-less cheerfully passing on details of the work waiting for the next shift.