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| History of The Red Deer Advocate |
Page Two |
A second newspaper - probably the Alberta Independent - was started in 1898 but closed the next year. The Wetaskiwin Free Lance, owned by George and Orville Fleming, began printing supplements entitled The Red Deer Gazette and the Lacombe Advertiser around the same time, 1898.
In August of 1900, the Flemings, father and son, purchased a press and young Orville began publishing the Red Deer Echo in March, 1901. In July, 1901, when Red Deer's population was 323, the Flemings built their own building for the Red Deer Echo on Ross Street. But all was not well. In 1902 the Board of Trade requested "the Echo be greatly improved or an option of purchase be given of the plant." The Flemings bowed out and The Echo was leased to O.A. Butterfield. On May 1, 1903, it was announced the Echo would thereafter be known as The Alberta Advocate.
Why the Advocate? One story has it that John Moore, Red Deer's first great entrepreneur, one of the owners of the paper, and later the first member of the new Alberta Legislature for Red Deer, decided that he would not be an "echo" of anyone. So The Alberta Advocate was born.
In August, 1903, Mr. Butterfield sold his interest in the paper to the Advocate Publishing Co. Ltd.
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