I have been a rabid reader of newspapers all my life. Sadly, the printed versions are rapidly falling by the wayside however for the time being we can still get our favorite newspaper online, some paid and some still free.
My life-long hobby, being The History Hound, has and I suspect will continue to be totally dependant on the free exchange of information through newspapers.
It is for this reason that I have decided to examine the history of Newspapers in Canada: 1800s–1900s. I hope that you will fund this topic of interest.
Because of my circumstance and my tendency to get tired, I have decided to do this project in a series of shorter pieces in an attempt to relay to you the depth of the information that I have found in my research and to, quite frankly, lessen the work load from my end.
The first newspapers in what is now Canada were published in Nova Scotia and Québec in the early 1750s, followed by their arrival in Upper Canada in the 1790s.
They were initially known as gazettes, they were instruments of the colonial government of the day, tightly controlled and monitored by the government officials who subsidized them. It wasn’t until 1800 to 1850 that independent newspapers were first established. During that time, printing presses became less expensive to establish and operate, and literacy rates and an appetite for news and views developed rapidly.
Most colonial newspapers in North America were directly connected to commercial printing operations that depended on government subsidies to operate. Known as “King’s Printers,” they were independent businesses that received most of their income from printing materials for colonial officials, such as proclamations, laws and regulations. The first printers set up shop in Halifax, Québec City and Montréal in the 1750s and published weekly newspapers, known as gazettes, that disseminated official notices on behalf of colonial administrators. Their reliance on revenues from sources other than readers — from governments, political parties and advertisers — was characteristic of Canadian newspapers until the 1850s, when colonial populations and commerce expanded and reader and advertising revenues became more profitable.
Following the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775, many skilled Loyalist printers arrived from New England. By the mid-1780s, there were weekly newspapers in Saint John, New Brunswick (Royal Gazette and the New Brunswick Advertiser, 1785) and Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island (Royal American Gazette, and Weekly Intelligencer of the Island of Saint John, 1787).
The Halifax Gazette was the first newspaper published in what is now Canada. Its first edition, a two-page paper, was printed on 23 March 1752. It was started by John Bushell, a printer who had arrived in Halifax months earlier to run the city’s first printing press. The first editions of the Halifax Gazette published excerpts from British and European publications, as well as news from the British colonies in America and the Caribbean. Halifax had been settled just three years before the Halifax Gazette was founded and had a small population (about 4,000 people). As a result, local coverage was small but grew over time. About one-quarter of the Halifax Gazette was dedicated to Nova Scotia news, including proclamations, notices of ship arrivals and reports of stolen goods and even runaway slaves.
After several name changes, the paper became the Royal Gazette, which remains the official publication of the provincial government of Nova Scotia.
There were no newspapers in New France (1608–1763), largely because French officials opposed the establishment of printing presses in the colony. But after the British Conquest and the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763, printers began to arrive in the province of Québec from the American colonies.
William Brown and Thomas Gilmore published the first edition of the bilingual Quebec Gazette (Gazette de Québec) in Québec City. The four-page paper included many government announcements and two pages of advertisements, both of which financed the paper. The Quebec Gazette was the first newspaper in the province of Québec and began with the ideal of informing the public with impartiality. Its editors were known to reprint political commentary from both the British and republican (American) perspectives. However, mention of the revolutionary events in the American colonies was censored by Governor Guy Carleton after 1768, and publication of the paper was suspended during the American invasion of Québec in 1775–76.
The Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, an English-language weekly published in Québec City, is a descendant of the Quebec Gazette, which merged with the Morning Chronicle in 1874 and the Daily Telegraph in 1925.
In May 1776, Fleury Mesplet, a printer from Philadelphia, arrived in American-occupied Montréal to set up a French-language printing press. When the Americans withdrew from Montréal weeks after his arrival there, Mesplet was jailed because of his attempts to persuade Québec to join the American Revolution. He was released shortly after and, on 3 June 1778, published the first fully French-language newspaper in Canada, La Gazette du commerce et littéraire, pour la ville et district de Montréal. In 1779, the Gazette was suspended when Mesplet and the paper’s editor, Valentin Jautard, were arrested by colonial authorities and jailed for their radical views.
Mesplet was released from jail in 1782 because Montréal lacked a capable printer. On 25 August 1785, he published the first edition of the bilingual Montreal Gazette/La Gazette de Montréal. It wasn’t an official government gazette and was instead critical of the Catholic clergy and the seigneurial system. The paper also published stories about education, literature and politics. By 1788, for example, the Montreal Gazette demanded that a legislative assembly be established in Québec. The Montreal Gazette included advertisements, which brought a new stream of revenue to the paper. According to historian Claude Galarneau, the ads can be read as historical documents that “reveal the rapid development of Montréal’s economic, social and cultural life.” It’s one of the oldest surviving newspapers in Canada.
The first newspaper would be established in Upper Canada in the late 1700’s in Newmark which would later become Niagara on the lake.
In 1793, Mr. Louis Roy, who had worked for both William Brown and Fleury Mesplet — was hired as Upper Canada’s official printer by lieutenant-governor John Graves Simcoe. While operating the press from Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake), Roy established the first newspaper in what is now Ontario: The Upper Canada Gazette, or American Oracle. Its first edition, published on 18 April 1793, was an official government gazette. The Upper Canada Gazette published government announcements, as well as non-government news, including advertisements, foreign news and some local news, editorials and letters to the editor. Unlike more modern newspapers, its stories did not carry author bylines or headlines. Instead, the titles of articles read “From a New York paper” or “We have extracted the following from a London paper.”
Brothers Gideon and Silvester Tiffany took over the press and publication after 1794. They published news from the United States, which was of interest to their readers, who were Loyalists who had moved to Upper Canada. As a result, colonial administrators reprimanded the Tiffanys for their “republican support.” The Upper Canada Gazette moved to York (now Toronto) in 1798 and became an official government gazette.
On 20 July 1799, the Tiffanys published the Canada Constellation, the first independent newspaper in Upper Canada. It folded shortly after, in 1800.
Independent newspapers were first established in Canada between about 1800 and 1850. During that period, printing presses became less expensive to establish and operate, and literacy rates and an appetite for news and views developed. Since publishers were less dependent on government subsidy than before, they were free to question and criticize the powers that be. As a result, an independent but not impartial journalism developed. From the mid-1800s to the early 1900s, newspapers became more profitable as populations and commerce expanded and reader and advertising revenues grew. During this time, mainstream newspapers represented the interests of political parties and cultural groups.
It was not until the period between the 1800 and the 1850’ that the Independent and Partisan Newspapers appeared.
The development of legislative assemblies in British North America encouraged the creation of political factions. At the same time, particularly in Halifax, Saint John, Montréal, Kingston and York (Toronto), a merchant class with an interest both in reading commercial intelligence and in advertising was growing.
Weekly newspapers sprouted up, allied with the various political movements and cultural groups, as well as various mercantile and agricultural interests. This was encouraged by the advent of cheaper and more efficient presses brought more printers into the business. Many of the newspapers established during this period were run by independent “printer-editors” who controlled both the press itself and the editorial message of their publications. To make money, they published almanacs, books and pamphlets for various clients. As reader appetites for news increased, newspapers proliferated. During this period, some cities and towns were covered by two newspapers, including Kingston, York, Montréal and Québec City.
In Lower Canada, the Quebec Mercury (established in Québec City in 1805) and the Montreal Herald (1811) became mouthpieces for the province’s English-speaking merchants and politicians, while French-language newspapers Le Canadien (established in Québec City 1806) and La Minerve (Montréal, 1826) spoke for the rising French Canadian professional and political interests.
Printer-editor William Lyon Mackenzie, famous for his part in the 1837 rebellion and later Toronto’s Mayor, published the first edition of the Colonial Advocate on 18 May 1824 in Queenston, Upper Canada. He established the weekly to argue the cause of the Reform movement in general and farmers in particular against the dominant professional and mercantile groups in Upper Canada ( Family Compact).
In the Maritimes, newspapers such as the Nova Scotian (established 1824) also challenged the authority of colonial oligarchies — especially under the editorship of political reformer Joseph Howe, a leading proponent of responsible government.
Amor de Cosmos used his newspaper, The British Colonist, first published on 11 December 1858, to promote responsible government and British Columbia’s entry into Confederation. As was the case with Mackenzie and Howe, work in newspapers helped launch de Cosmos’s political career.
During this period, newspapers carried a ‘political message’, or a central viewpoint as espoused by a political figure of faction! We would appear to be moving back to this model.
In this episode of the series, I look at the growth of the Canadian newspaper industry from the perspective of their use as a tool of political or social policy!
By the early decades of the 19th century, most major newspapers were allied with either the Reform movement (now the Liberal Party) or the Conservative Party. These papers were quite often tools of the parties they claimed to support but more likely organs of specific leaders or factions within those parties. Thus, the Globe (established in 1844) was a personal organ of its publisher, the Reform politician George Brown. The Toronto Mail (1872), though set as an outlet for the Conservative Party, was quickly captured by the dominant faction of the party led by Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald.
Out West, The Manitoba Free Press, which was founded by W.F. Luxton in 1872, displayed a distinct Liberal preference from its earliest days. It was purchased in 1898 by Clifford Sifton, a prominent Liberal politician and Cabinet minister, and from that point it was considered the organ of the Liberal Party on the Prairies.
It was not unusual for an newspaper to deviate from the party line. The Toronto Mail, for example, broke with the Macdonald Conservatives in the 1880s, forcing the party to set up the Empire in 1887. The relative independence of newspapers from political parties and governments varied from place to place. But in general, newspapers had more potential for independence from parties as their revenues from circulation and advertising grew (financial independence).
While they may not have been merely tools of the parties, newspapers did remain closely tied to political factions well into the 20th century. The Toronto Star, which was established by striking printers with trade union backing in 1892, was reorganized in 1899 by a business consortium anxious to obtain a voice for the new Liberal Prime Minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier. During the first decade of the 20th century, out west the Calgary Herald used the organizational apparatus of the Alberta Conservative Party to sell subscriptions. As late as the 1930s, most major Québec newspapers were tied into patronage from the ruling government.
In part, the politicization of newspapers continued because readers demanded partisanship. Politics was a serious matter in 19th century Canada, and newspapers were expected to have views. Thus began the phenomenon of the two-newspaper town.
By 1870, every town large enough to support one newspaper supported two, typically, one Liberal and one Conservative. Furthermore, newspapers never cut themselves off completely from government patronage. From 1867, the federal government subsidized newspaper publishers by granting them special postal rates.
Canada’s first international wire service, the Canadian Associated Press (1903), was subsidized by the federal government, as was the domestic news co-operative, the Canadian Press, during the initial years after its founding in 1917.
The relationship between Canadian newspapers and the state has also had a darker side. Early publishers who were considered overly critical of government actions could and did find themselves in jail, and libel laws were used to silence bothersome editors. In the 20th century, state action was aimed primarily at left-wing newspapers. The Communist Party of Canada found itself proscribed and its publications banned at various times. The Québec government of Maurice Duplessis (1936–39 and 1944–59) used the Padlock Act to shut down what it considered to be communist newspapers. You may recall that limited censorship was imposed by the federal government in 1970 following the kidnapping of two men during the October Crisis.
During the 19th century, sources of revenue would change, and we begin to see the rise of advertising
While partisanship remained, the financial dependence of newspapers on governments and political parties would wane throughout the 19th century. The reason was related to the economics of newspaper publishing and to the overall economic development that followed.
Newspapers faced high overhead costs, i.e., newspapers were forced to incur the same initial outlays for equipment, typesetting and editorial matter whether they printed one copy or a run of 10,000. In the 1860s, when daily circulations were usually under 5,000, these overhead costs were covered by political party patronage. But as the population expanded and literacy levels increased, publishers were able to spread these overhead costs over more readers.
In addition, as a newspaper’s circulation increased, merchants became more interested in it as an advertising medium. With productive capacity increasing in all industries, advertising, as a means of persuading people to buy the massive volume of goods being produced, became crucial.
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