Montreal Star

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The Montreal Star was an English-language Canadian newspaper that appeared in Montreal , Quebec , Canada . It was discontinued in 1979 as a result of an eight month strike. It was Canada's largest newspaper until the 1950s and remained the dominant English-language newspaper in Montreal until shortly before it closed.

history

The former Montreal Star Building on Saint Jacques Street in Old Montreal .
The front page of the Montreal Daily Star reports on Germany's imminent surrender.

The newspaper was founded on January 16, 1869 by Hugh Graham, 1st Baron Atholstan and George T. Lanigan under the name Montreal Evening Star . Graham ran the paper for almost 70 years. In 1877, The Evening Star was renamed The Montreal Daily Star . In 1899 it reached 53,600 daily readers and in 1913 40 percent of the circulation was sold outside of Montreal.

Until 1915, the "Montreal Star" dominated the market for English-language evening newspapers in the city and Graham was able to outbid his competitors who had to close down, which secured him control of the English-speaking market.

In 1925, Graham sold the Montreal Star to John Wilson McConnell , but continued running the newspaper until his death in 1938. McConnell owned two other newspapers, the Montreal Standard and the Family Herald

The Montreal Star became very successful in the early 1940s , with a circulation of nearly 180,000 copies and roughly that level for another 30 years.

In 1951, the Montreal Star also published a weekend magazine as a supplement (subordinate to the former Montreal Standard ) with an initial circulation of 900,000 copies.

After McConnell's death in 1963, the Toronto-based FP newspaper group , which owned The Globe and Mail and Winnipeg Free Press , acquired the Montreal Star . Later in 1980, the FP chain was acquired by Thomson Newspapers.

In 1978 a printer strike began (through the printers' union) and with it the last eight months of the newspaper. Although the strike was settled in February 1979 and the Montreal Star reappeared, it had lost readers and advertisers to rival newspaper The Gazette and so the newspaper was permanently shut down on September 25, 1979 for just a few months. The Gazette bought the Montreal Star's building, print shop and archive, making it the only English language newspaper in Montreal. The newspaper stopped appearing just a few months after another daily in Montreal, because the Montréal-Matin also stopped the printing press. Many people in Montreal were affected by these closings. The Calgary Albertan , the Winnipeg Tribune and the Ottawa Journal closed at the same time as the Montreal Star . This prompted the federal government to set up the Kent Commission to investigate newspaper monopolies in Canada.

Important employees

The "Star" was the first newspaper in Canada to have a staff of cartoonists, beginning with the hiring of Henri Julien in 1888.

Sports editor Harold Atkins, who wrote in the Sports Snippings column, gave two nicknames: Maurice Richard he called the "Rocket" and he called the wheelchair basketball team "The Wheelchair Wonders".

Tom Paskal, co-editor of the newspaper and responsible for the science section, wrote Sand Castles: Telidon Field Trials in Canada in 1981 , one of the first studies on the question of how the Internet would develop.

Other employees worth mentioning are: Red Fisher , Doris Giller , Nick Auf der Maur , Don Macpherson , Terry Mosher and Dennis Trudeau . Many of them switched to The Gazette when the "Star" closed.

Raymond Heard was the White House correspondent for the newspaper from 1963 to 1973, and then served the newspaper as editor-in-chief from 1976 until it closed in 1979, responsible for all content.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Duncan McDowall: Getting Down to Business: Canada, 1896-1919. In: McCord Museum. Retrieved July 2, 2015 .
  2. ^ JL Granatstein: Montreal Standard ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia . Retrieved July 2, 2015.
  3. ↑ SANDRA MARTIN, SONIA SARFATI: Magazines ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia . Retrieved December 3, 2016.
  4. ↑ Press: A Star Is Shorn. In: TIME , Canadian edition. October 8, 1979. Retrieved April 27, 2011 .
  5. ↑ Déclaration du Conseil de presse du Québec concernant la fermeture du Montreal Star (extrait du Rapport annuel 1979–1980). Retrieved November 24, 2016 .
  6. ↑ DON MONET, ALAN HUSTAK: Political Cartoons ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia . Retrieved March 26, 2008.
  7. ↑ Sandcastles: Telidon Field Trials in Canada. Retrieved November 24, 2016 .