It was 90 years ago today the first issue of The Weekly Optimist hit the streets.

The Weekly Optimist hit the streets. Published on March 23, 1922, about 500 copies were printed of that first edition, which consisted of four pages.

The Optimist was founded when Vincent Clesson Dunning accepted an invitation from the Delta Board of Trade (the predecessor of the Delta Chamber of Commerce) to start a newspaper to fill the vacancy left after the demise of the Delta Times in 1914.

Dunning, trained as a printer in his youth in southern Manitoba, closed the weekly Globe in Barons, 35 miles north of Lethbridge, Alberta, and sold the Sun he had started in Carmangay, 10 miles north of Barons.

In January of 1922, he arrived on the West Coast, found the equipment he needed in Vancouver to produce a small newspaper and installed it in the former saloon of the Ladner Hotel, at the corner of 48th Avenue and Delta Street, just a block from where the Optimist has its offices today.

A magazine to commemorate the anniversary will be included in next Friday's edition.