Early Life
Before the egg carton, before the Interior News, there was a young man named Joseph Leopold Coyle.
Joseph was born in Ambleside, Bruce County, Ontario on May 31st 1871. He was one of twelve children of James Coyle and Ellen Heffermen, a farming couple of Irish descent. Joseph’s knack for invention apparently went all the way back to his youth: according to his daughter Ellen Coyle Myton, his early creations included a small device for carding wool and a bicycle pedal-powered boat, with which he explored the Saugeen River near his home.
As the older Coyle brothers inherited the family farm, the younger siblings were left to find their own ways to make a living. Joseph began his career in a factory at the age of 12, then worked as a clean-up and delivery boy for the nearby Walkerton Telescope newspaper. This was the start of a decades-long involvement with the newspaper business. As Ellen Myton put it, Joseph “had printer’s ink in his blood.”
At age 17, Joseph left home to work for the printing bureau at the Ottawa Parliament Buildings. He enjoyed life in the capital, joining a local snowshoeing club and winning a six-day bicycle race. After several years in Ottawa, he was approached by a man advertising the Simplex typewriter and offered a job as a traveling demonstrator of this machine. Coyle accepted and spent over a decade promoting Simplex throughout the United States. However, his interest in journalism persisted. Around 1905, while living in Washington State, he heard that a new paper - the Daily Dispatch - was opening in Juneau, Alaska, and successfully applied to operate a Simplex machine there. It was through this job that he became familiar with the Bulkley Valley, which was frequently advertised by the government land office for its farmland and natural resources.
Coyle soon came to love the northwest environment. By now in his mid-30s, he decided it was time to put down roots and found a paper of his own - and he had the perfect place in mind.