Northwest Passage (newspaper)

The Northwest Passage was an underground newspaper published biweekly from March 17, 1969 – June 1986 in Bellingham, Washington (1969-1977), and then in Seattle, Washington (1977-1986).^[1][2] The paper was co-founded by Frank Kathman, Laurence Kee, and Michael Carlson (now Harman).^[3] The newspaper covered countercultural topics, chiefly environmentalism and left-wing politics.^[4]

Co-founder Frank Kathman took a class on underground press with Bernard Weiner at Western Washington State College. Kathman and Michael Carlson later wrote and designed a poster calling for the founding of Northwest Passage. They recruited Laurence Kee, who was a reporter for the Bellingham Herald. Kathman served as the publisher, Kee the editor, and Carlson the art director. Kee paid the Lynden Tribune on March 17, 1969 to get the first issue printed. Kee was later fired from the conservative Herald for his involvement with the Passage.

The paper was sustained by donations, sales, personal hawking campaigns in Bellingham and Seattle, and selling advertising space to Warner Bros. Records. Subscriptions were sold to individuals, university libraries, and community libraries nationwide. The Tribune later refused to print the Passage, bending to conservative political pressure in the county, and the Passage was moved to the Skagit Valley Herald for further printing. Published in a tabloid newspaper format and sold for 25 cents, it was a member of the Underground Press Syndicate and the Liberation News Service. Volunteers established the layout for a reported circulation of 6,000 copies in 1972.

The Northwest Passage was originally based in Kee's home on Maplewood Avenue, where the bedrooms were converted into graphic layout rooms. After being evicted from Maplewood Avenue, the Passage relocated first to a house on Yew Street Road and then to a former taxidermy building on West Holly Street, near the downtown area. Finally, the paper moved to offices in the Morgan Block Building in the Fairhaven District of Bellingham. The Morgan Block Building, located at 1000 Harris Avenue, was owned by the People's Land Trust.^[5] It also housed Good Earth Pottery, Fairhaven Music, and the Community Food Co-op, and hosted several counter-cultural organizations from 1969 through to the end of the Vietnam War.^[6] In the 1970s, Fairhaven was recognized as an area with cooperative enterprises such as a community garden program, a primary school, and a co-op flour mill, which continued for around 50 years.^[7][8]

Though initially focused on opposition to the Vietnam War, the paper's scope broadened to include investigative journalism on political and environmental issues in Bellingham and the Pacific Northwest. During the People's Park riots in Berkeley, California in the summer of 1969, the Passage was chosen as the pool print representative for the national media, and was allowed inside the park to be "embedded" with the armed National Guard unit that was holding the park against the siege conducted by demonstrators who were attempting to get the park restored to its former use as a public area. The article by Kee was reprinted or referenced in some other publications. While the newspaper occasionally covered issues beyond its local region, it remained based in Bellingham throughout much of its publication history.

Co-founding original editor Laurence Kee left the paper to found the Seattle rock band Child.^[9]

In 1977, Northwest Passage relocated to Seattle and was produced at 1017 E Pike Street.^[10] After 1981, the Passage switched to monthly publication.^[11]

Five articles from Northwest Passage were selected for the book Alternative Papers: Selections from the Alternative Press, 1979 – 1980.^[12]

A 2000 Northwest Passage Reunion, organized by Bernard Weiner and Buck Meloy, brought out reflections from former staff members.^[13]

• Mary Kay Becker, later a state legislator and a judge on the Washington State Court of Appeals.
• Bob Hicks, who had a long newspaper career as an editor with the Portland Oregonian and later as an online reviewer.
• Roxanne Park, who became a leader with the Prison Sentencing Commission for the State of Washington.
• Bernard Weiner, who became a critic/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle for nearly two decades and co-founded the political-analysis website The Crisis Papers.
• Buck Meloy, who became a leader in the fishing community in Alaska and along the Pacific Coast.
• Cindy Green (Davis), illustrator of the Molasses Jug centerfold (created by Sheila Gilda and Elizabeth Mabe), went on to a career as a graphic artist.
• Jerome (Jerry) Richard and Carolyn (Griff) Richard. Jerry taught English at Fairhaven College. He went on to write books including Kiss of the Prison Dancer and The Architect. Griff went on to teach English and then joined a Seattle law firm as a paralegal.
• David Wolf, who moved on to various leadership roles with the City of Bellingham and Whatcom County.
• John Servais, who founded and edits the website Northwest Citizen.
• Melissa Queen, who became a noted yoga teacher/board member at the Mount Madonna Center in California.
• Joel Connelly, who became the politics writer for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper.
• Marga Rosencranz (Rose Hancock), who became executive director of the American Institute of Architects–Seattle.
• Jeff (Yehuda) Fine, who while with the paper wrote the columns on Wild Pacific Northwest Herbs and later went on to find and become the principal of one of the earliest alternative high schools for the Mendocino Unified School District in California—The Community School,^[14]. He then moved to Brooklyn where he was ordained as a rabbi, became head guidance counselor for Yeshiva University in NYC and later a noted author of the recovery book Times Square Rabbi—Finding the Hope in Lost Kids' Lives (Hazelden, UP Publishing), The Real Deal—For Parents' Only: The Top 75 Questions Teens Want Answered Today, as well as his first novel Shadow Walker (Simon & Schuster) on the rise of sex trafficking in America.
• Barbara Sjoholm (writing under her pen name, Barbara Wilson), an American writer, editor, publisher and translator. She is the co-founder of Seal Press.^[15]

• List of underground newspapers of the 1960s counterculture

• Northwest Passage on FairhavenHistory.com