The work of local historian and newspaper columnist Leith Knight will live on with the publication of a book compiling some of her extensive writing.
Larry Hellings and his son Scott selected more than 100 of her columns and published them in a book titled “A Knight to Remember.”
“We have always been interested in local history and thought somebody should do something with her columns,” said Scott, a former reporter with Moose Jaw Express and a Moose Jaw Times-Herald reporter.
Knight wrote more than 2,000 columns covering a broad range of subjects from 1953 until she quit some 50 years later.
“She really started writing (weekly) in the 1960s.” She started the Moose Jaw Public Library Archives in the 1960s.
On retiring in 1983, she continued the weekly columns in the newspaper.
“Some of them were very long, continued to the next week.”
“Leith was amazing,” he said. “A lot of people don’t know about the history of Moose Jaw. We wanted to revive her columns for them.”
Compiling the book took a lot of work. “The Public Library Archives that Leith founded has a collection called the Leith Knight Fonds.”
They chose columns they thought were of particular interest for the six themed sections of the book. “We thought this one might be good for transportation, this one for crime and punishment.”
The archives collection has newspaper clippings of her columns and some of her research papers and original notes. “They were very interesting.”
Once the columns were assembled they had to be typed for publication — a task her friend Hilda Davies performed,
The first 25 copies sold quickly to “people who knew Leith.”
A second set was launched at the Cosmo Senior Centre spring trade show.
Post Horizon has agreed to carry the book.
“We have enough columns for a second book,” said Scott. Knight also wrote a history of Moose Jaw, All The Moose All the Jaw in 1982 for the city’s 75th anniversary and wrote Birds of the Moose Jaw Area in 1967.
Her archives were described by famous Canadian author Pierre Berton, author of histories of the CPR, as the best archives in a small Canadian city.
The Hellings noted some of her words may seem archaic in today’s context but chose not to alter her phrases that once were in common use.
Ron Walter can be reached at ronjoy@sasktel.net
