FOR over 35 years Bill Draayer has been in the newspaper business, as printer, writer, photographer, editor and Alberta association manager. For 25 of those years he owned and published The Wetaskiwin (Alta.) Times. He began his career in 1928 at the weekly Milestone (Sask.) Mail and went to the daily Regina Star and was a printing salesman before buying the Wetaskiwin paper in 1941 from the estate of former CWNA president Victor French. When The Times was sold in 1966, Bill continued as general manager, but then embarked on a full-time career in public relations. He served with the Alberta Department of Health as public relations officer and publications editor. The next year he went to the Workers Compensation Board of Alberta where he organized the Public Information Division. In 1976 he became the secretary manager of the Alberta Weekly Newspapers Association, working at first in the second bedroom of his home, and also taught advertising and public relations at Grant MacEwan Community College. Soon he found it necessary to devote full time to the association work. He retired in 1982 and since then he wasinvolved as an advertising/marketing consultant with the Counsellor Assistance for Small Enterprise program of the Canadian Industrial Development Bank in Edmonton, editor of a quarterly magazine for his church, and took on special assignments for AWNA. He served on the Advisory Committeee for Journalism at Grant MacEwan college for 10 years and continued to enjoy speaking on advertising and public relations to business clubs, local advertisers and other organizations.
He was director and president of the Alberta association, president of the Chamber of Commerce, president of the Red Cross, organizer and first president of the Wetaskiwin Community Council, organizer and secretary of the Wetaskiwin Historical Society, steward and elder of the United Church.
On retirement from AWNA he was honoured with the establishment of The Bill Draayer Award for presentation annually to a weekly newspaper person for outstanding contribution to the progress and development of AWNA. Other awards include Honorary Life Memberships in the Alberta and Canadian weekly newspapers associations, a Chamber of Commerce community service plaque and Centennial Medal.
The association was in healthy state during his presidency.
By 1956, Bill Smiley’s Sugar and Spice column was growing in popularity with 17 weeklies already running it.
For the first time, the Audit Bureau of Circulations named a Canadian weekly newspaper representative to the board. Bill Cranston was appointed to represent CWNA.
President Draayer welcomed 425 people in “Canada’s biggest family” to the 38th convention at the Banff Springs Hotel in August 1957 for lively, well-attended sessions and social events.
Bill Draayer died in 1992 lauded as “one of the giants among Alberta’s community newspaper leaders.
