The Globe and Mail - History

History

The predecessor to The Globe and Mail was The Globe, founded in 1844 by Scottish immigrant George Brown, who would later become a Father of Confederation. Brown's liberal politics led him to court the support of the Clear Grits, precursor to the modern Liberal Party of Canada. The Globe began in Toronto as a weekly party organ for Brown's Reform Party, but seeing the economic gains that he could make in the newspaper business, Brown soon targeted a wide audience of liberal minded freeholders. He selected as the motto for the editorial page a quotation from Junius, "The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures." The quotation is carried on the editorial page daily to this day.

By the 1850s, The Globe had become an independent and well-regarded daily newspaper. It began distribution by railway to other cities in Ontario shortly after Canadian Confederation. At the dawn of the twentieth century, The Globe added photography, a women's section, and the slogan "Canada's National Newspaper," which remains on its front-page banner today. It began opening bureaus and offering subscriptions across Canada.

On November 23, 1936, The Globe (which had a circulation of 78,000 by this point) merged with The Mail and Empire (circulation 118,000), itself formed through a merger in 1895 between The Toronto Mail and Toronto Empire. The Mail was founded in 1872 by a rival of Brown's, Tory politician Sir John A. Macdonald. Macdonald was the first Prime Minister of Canada and the founder of the party that spawned the modern Conservative Party of Canada, and The Mail served as a Conservative Party organ.

With the merger, The Globe became The Globe and Mail. Press reports at the time stated, "the minnow swallowed the whale". The merger was arranged by George McCullagh, who fronted for mining magnate William Henry Wright and became the first publisher of The Globe and Mail. McCullagh committed suicide in 1952, and the newspaper was sold to the Webster family of Montreal. As the paper lost ground to The Toronto Star in the local Toronto market, it began to expand its national circulation.

In 1965, the paper was bought by Winnipeg-based FP Publications, controlled by Brig. Richard Malone, which owned a chain of local Canadian newspapers. FP put a strong emphasis on the Report on Business section that was launched in 1962, thereby building the paper's reputation as the voice of Toronto's business community. FP Publications and The Globe and Mail were sold in 1980 to The Thomson Corporation, a company run by the family of Kenneth Thomson.

In 2001, The Globe and Mail was combined with broadcast assets held by Bell Canada to form the joint venture Bell Globemedia. Nine years later, at the end of 2010, the Thomson family, through its holding company Woodbridge, acquired direct control of The Globe and Mail with an 85-percent stake. BCE continues to hold 15 percent.

The Globe and Mail has always been a morning newspaper. Since the 1980s, it has been printed in separate editions in six Canadian cities: Halifax, Montreal, Toronto (several editions), Winnipeg (actually printed in Brandon, Manitoba), Calgary and Vancouver.

In 1995, the paper launched its Web site, globeandmail.com; on June 9, 2000, the Web site began covering breaking news with its own content and journalists in addition to the content of the print newspaper. It later spawned a companion Web site, globeinvestor.com, focusing on financial and investment-related news. In 2004, access to some features of globeandmail.com became restricted to paid subscribers only. The subscription service was revised a few years later to become a service called Globe Plus, which offers an e-edition of the newspaper, access to its archives, as well as membership to a premium investment site.