The Gazette (Montreal) - History

History

Fleury Mesplet founded a French-language newspaper called La Gazette du commerce et littéraire, pour la ville et district de Montréal on June 3, 1778. This paper was shut down in 1779, with Mesplet and the editor, Valentin Jautard, having been imprisoned for their participation in the American Revolutionary War.

Mesplet began a second weekly, La Gazette de Montréal, on August 25, 1785, which had a dual French-English bilingual format. It is the direct ancestor of the current newspaper. It was later purchased by an anglophone businessman and converted into an English-only paper in 1822.

On April 25, 1849, The Gazette published a special edition in which its editor-in-chief, James Moir Ferres, called the "Anglo-Saxon" residents to arms after Royal Assent of a compensation law for Lower Canada. This is the lead event of the burning of the Parliament Buildings. Ferres was subsequently arrested.

In 1968, The Gazette was acquired by the Southam newspaper chain, which owned major dailies across Canada.

For many years, The Gazette was caught in a three-way fight for the English newspaper audience in Montreal with the tabloid Montreal Herald and the broadsheet Montreal Star. The Gazette was second in circulation to the Montreal Star, which sold more newspapers in the city and had a significant national reputation in the first half of the 20th century. The Montreal Herald closed in 1957, after publishing for 146 years. The Montreal Star, part of the Free Press chain (which owned The Globe and Mail and the Winnipeg Free Press), was hit by a long strike action and ceased publication in 1979, less than a year after the strike was settled.

In 1988, a competing English-language daily, The Montreal Daily News, was launched. The Montreal Daily News adopted a tabloid format and introduced a Sunday edition, forcing The Gazette to respond. After The Montreal Daily News folded in 1989, after less than two years in operation, The Gazette kept its Sunday edition going until August 2010.

In 1996, the Southam papers were bought by Conrad Black's Hollinger Inc. Then in August 2000, Hollinger sold the Southam newspapers, including The Gazette, to Canwest Global Communications Corp., controlled by the Winnipeg-based Asper family. In 2010, a new media group, Postmedia, bought the Gazette and other papers from the financially troubled Canwest.

To celebrate its 150th anniversary, The Gazette published a facsimile of one of its earliest issues. Much effort was made to use a type of paper that imitated 18th century paper, with fake chainlines and laidlines to make the paper look old.