Torstar’s Vaughan Press Centre celebrates 20th anniversary

“No other newspaper did that,” the 28-year Star veteran recalled. “It was about eight pages and we were able to run colour photos on every page.

“It was an old fashioned feeling,” said Breidon, 59, who started at the Star as a press operator in 1984. “It was pretty exciting.”

But there is nothing old fashioned about the Vaughan Press Centre, which celebrated its 20th anniversary Thursday.

When the $400 million facility near Hwy. 7 and Hwy. 400 opened, it was the most technologically advanced in the world.

Its size — 3.2 hectares, about as big as the Rogers Centre — dwarfed other printing plants in Canada and was among the largest in North America.

Total space on the centre’s four levels was equivalent to more than 10 Canadian football fields.

The Starwas believed to be the first newspaper to move to a new printing plant, change the type of presses, reduce page size and redesign — all at the same time.

Ruth Atkinson Hindmarsh, Star founder Joseph E Atkinson’s daughter, pushed the button to start the presses in Nov. 1992.

And as former Starpublisher David Jolley noted at the time, “the state-of-the-art plant will be the engine that propels the Star into the next century … The quality of the print will be much improved while pictures will be clearer and sharper.”

Two decades — and a digital revolution later — the press centre is still going strong, noted John Honderich, chair of the board of Torstar, the newspaper’s parent company.

“It has served the Toronto Star extraordinarily well,” he said. “It is still one of the premier publishing facilities in North America. It is still state-of-the-art.

While both the Star’s size and circulation have dipped over the years as readers have migrated to thestar.com, the press centre has adapted by taking on more business, he said.

“For those who say we’re dying, I would say their warnings are premature,” he added.

In addition to the Star, the press centre prints the National Post, Metro, several Metroland papers and Weekly Voice, Canada’s largest South Asian newspaper.

“The number of contracts we have to print papers in Vaughan now is so many that we can’t handle them all. In fact we have to send some of the work out,” Honderich said.

“Are there pressures? Of course there are. Are we going through tough times? Yes we are. Do we have to adapt to the digital revolution? Without question,” he acknowledged.

“That said, there is still a role for newspapers and the Vaughan facility produces an exceptional paper,” he added. “And we are making money from being a publisher of choice for other people.”

The plant has also made other changes to adapt to the times. Between 40 per cent and 60 per cent of the Star’s newsprint is recycled. And it has moved to more environmentally-friendly vegetable-based dyes.

What is remarkable, is how a plant built for a single purpose has evolved to a multi-purpose facility, said Dean Zavarise, executive vice president and general manager of Torstar Printing Group.

“The past number of years have been challenging times for the newspaper and the printing industries,” Zavarise said. “There may be fewer printing facilities in the future, but with continued hard work and dedication we believe that Vaughan will be around for a long time.”