The sleepy town of Rouleau, 30 minutes east of Moose Jaw, is best known as the scene for filming of the popular television comedy Dog River.
The local grain elevator still carries the name Dog River.
A century ago, Rouleau was the circus poster capital of North America.
In those days, travelling theatrical troupes and circuses played routes from town to town. Since this was before television the main form of promotion by the various operators was colourful posters, usually 28 inches by 42 or larger.
In 1912 Andrew King, owner of the weekly Rouleau Enterprise since 1909, had a stroke of luck, as he calls it in his autobiography, Pen, Paper, and Printing Ink.
A desperate advance agent for a travelling theatre company came to the Enterprise newspaper and print shop.
He came in several times that day, impatient that his posters hadn’t arrived from Chicago and wondered why there was no poster printing around Rouleau.
Joking, King suggested starting one then and there. When the advance man agreed, King had second thoughts about printing these oversized posters in the middle of the Prairies.
His attitude slowly changed once the advance agent informed him a poster printing plant only needed good train service and that showmen never visited poster printing plants.
The posters required large handset type, larger than any of the metal type in the shop. King went to work and hand carved the block type from wood for hand set printing. Each letter was set one at a time.
Thus began Enterprise Show Print located in a Prairie town of 800 in the middle of nowhere,
Word got out and King printed posters for circuses and theatrical companies all over North America. By 1914 he was mailing poster catalogues to fairs and exhibitions in the West, and began selling the rosettes used in fair and sports day competitions.
In 1919 luck arrived with the Winnipeg General Strike. Without railway transport posters from a Winnipeg printer could not be sent. King's print shop got the poster work.
“From the time we began to serve circuses there was rarely one that entered Canada, particularly west of the Great Lakes that we did not serve.”
Posters were printed for Al. B. Barnes and Clyde Beatty among others.
One year the world famous Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey Circus, the oldest circus in America, offered him a poster contract worth $90,000.
King decided the extra journeyman printers and investment in another press was too much for a one year contract. He turned down the job.
When King purchased the Estevan Mercury newspaper in 1944 the poster business moved with him. The heyday for circus and travelling posters was over once the Second World War ended, but the shop still employed 30 persons.
Ron Walter can be reached at ronjoy@sasktel.net
