Volunteer Eric Morse continues his archival exploration of the Seven News, a community newspaper that covered the then-Ward-7 (including Cabbagetown) in the late 1970s.

The lead story of the issue was a profile of the local branch of Oxfam (at 7 Carlton St.) but locally the story was dry goods in food co-ops. The hidden lead was that the number of food co-ops in Donvale had dropped from seven to just three (two familiar names – Central Neighbourhood House, then as now at 349 Ontario St., and Christian Resource Centre) but the good news was that they had begun offering dry goods, and the eye-opener for those of us staring at the shelves today is the prices. CNH Co-op was asking 61 cents for a loaf of  bread.

John Sewell seems to have gotten himself into some poo-poo again with at least one reader (and Sumach Street merchant, Victor Fletcher) for his ‘pooh-poohing’ the idea of a bylaw forbidding dogs in city parks while voting for a ban on smoking therein. “Don’t you have a front yard of your own, John?” “If you can get them to go on my front yard, you are welcome to try!” From here the controversy, not to say the cartoon, looks a bit inscrutable. It probably was then.

One of the charms of Seven News was the linguistic diversity in the advertising section in a day before Google Translate was a gleam in Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s eye.

The interesting thing is that the advertisers happily bought the space in the quiet faith that their community did, indeed, read Seven News. The ad in Chinese is probably a public notice since 15 Prospect St. was (and is) Winchester Public School.

Lynn Goldblatt writes that local senior citizen Pat Barrett received a citation from Governor General Jules Leger for organizing trips to Harbourfront for other seniors.

John Sewell himself pens a cri de coeur over the death of public activism in Toronto, on the very verge of the birth of Metro.

There’s also a  lovely profile of Nettleship’s Hardware on Parliament, whose owner Margaret Taggart passed away only last year.

The full stories introduced above are available at http://www.connexions.org/SevenNews/Docs/7News-Volume08-Number14.pdf . The PDF archive is a remarkable achievement by Connexions, a collective dedicated to preserving social activism, of which 7 News is surely a shining example.