Paradise Lost

Outside the tiny white frame building a large sign says simply "Printing." That is the headquarters of the Whitehorse Star in Yukon Territory. Inside, another large sign pleads: "Don't Shoot! We're Doing Our Best!" The first sign went up six years ago because Editor Horace Edward Moore wanted business. The second went up last week because he had too much.

A birdlike, 63-year-old, Mr. Chipsy sort of man who emigrated long ago from England, Horace Moore had worked around western Canada at various jobs before buying the Star. From the paper, and from whatever job printing he could pick up, he hoped for a living and leisure. He acquired a linotype machine and an operator, upped his paper's size from four to six pages, turned out job printing for Whitehorse's few stores. On the side he published a quarterly for Canada's Anglican Yukon Diocese. One year he won a Canadian Weekly Newspaper Association award for the best paper under 500 circulation. Best of all, he did all this in an easy five-day week.

But last year the Alaska Highway brought briskness to Editor Moore's idyllic retreat. Thousands of inflooding U.S. Army engineers and private construction workers transformed Whitehorse into something unreal. Circulation of the Star did not zoom: there are still only some 600 Stargazers. But the job printing orders went up like a rocket. Officers and contractors now bang on the Star's door with orders for letterheads, record forms, tickets, contracts, etc., in thousands.

With the aid of a spick-&-span new automatic press and four assistants (two are Army men who work part time), pipe-smoking, cap-wearing Horace Moore is doing the best he can. But gone are the five-day weeks and the life of Riley. Whitehorse's frosty, ink-stained paradise has been invaded.

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