The Globe and Mail continues to publish news

It is hard to say that about the Toronto Star or the CBC

The Globe and Mail has a storied history.¹ Founded before Confederation by publisher George Brown, the predecessor newspaper the “Globe” was a stalwart supporter of liberalism and its founder considered a “father of Confederation”. The Globe considered itself a national newspaper even before Canada became a nation and tied its printing schedule to train schedules making the Globe a popular read for train travelers.

George McCullagh was hired as a newsboy in 1918 and became the most successful seller of Globe subscriptions but in the downturn of 1928 was let go. As he left the Globe at nineteen his last words reportedly were “the next time I walk through this door I will own this place” or words to that effect. McCullagh had sold Globe subscriptions up and down rural Elgin county and had met many farmers and become interested in horses.

William Wright, a prospector without much formal training, discovered Canada’s largest near-surface gold deposit near Timmins (120 kilometers southeast in a town in 1972 named Kirkland Lake) and the Wright mine made Wright Canada’s richest man. He became friends with McCullagh who shared his interest in horses. Backed by Wright, McCullagh purchased the Globe for $1.3 million in 1936 and only weeks later bought competitor “The Mail and Empire” for $2.5 million creating the paper that even today is named “The Globe and Mail”. McCullagh’s Globe and Mail helped keep Canada’s longest serving Prime Minister Mackenzie King in office and for thirteen years (1935-1948) and almost singlehandedly kept Mitch Hepburn in the Ontario Premier’s office from 1934 to 1942.

Mackenzie King’s long tenure persisted despite the reality that he was an admirer of Adolf Hitler, resisted efforts to bring Canada into the second World War, and protected Quebecers from serving abroad in the war while sending conscripts from other Provinces to the battlefields and many to their deaths. Hepburn was an alcoholic who spent many days either sloshed out of his mind or entertaining hookers in a hotel suite, yet was among Ontario’s longest serving Premiers with McCullagh’s support.

Despite his support for the Liberal party, McCullagh’s best friend was Conservative George Drew.

McCullagh died of suicide on October 5, 1952 and his wife Phyllis then married Drew and in 1955 sold the Globe and Mail to the Montreal Webster family. My first business partner was Donald Colin “Ben” Webster, a scion of that family and a great friend to me until his death from cancer in 1997.

The Webster’s sold the Globe and Mail to FP Publications in 1965 despite that company’s publishing a competing newspaper, the Financial Post. FP Publications sold the Globe and Mail to the Thomson family’s Woodbridge holding company in 1980. Under Woodbridge, the Globe and Mail has emerged as an almost apolitical and objective newspaper and is widely considered Canada’s best paper. I say “almost” since there remain hints of Liberal bias in the Globe and Mail’s reporting but the paper nonetheless carries articles and op-eds that favour the Conservatives in opposition. The National Post (FP Publications), is also a reliable and objective paper, but appears to exhibit somewhat similar hints of a Conservative bias but likewise carries articles and opinions that promote Liberalism.

While today’s Globe and Mail and National Post can claim some level of integrity in reporting news devoid of ideology, no one can claim the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has an iota of objectivity since it is patently a Liberal propaganda machine dependent on over $1 billion a year of government handouts to exist, nor can the Toronto Star which has been a staunchly Liberal paper since McCullagh’s days as publisher of the Globe and Mail and arguably even earlier.

Canada is better served by having at least a couple of mainstream media that reliably report on news and events in contrast to the United States where CNN, CBS, MSNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post have relentlessly promoted the Democratic Party ideology and Fox News (which has a bit more balance) favours Republicans.

It is over 50 years since the New York Times or Washington Post have endorsed a Republican candidate for President with the NY Times last support for a Republican nominee dating back to Eisenhower in 1956. Despite the patent ideological bias of NY Times and Washington Post, I have many friends who claim these two papers are objective and reliable sources of U.S. news, an obvious case of delusion. CNN has been unreliable since it was sold by Ted Turner to Time Warner in 1996. Turner calls the day he sold CNN the “worse day of my life”.

The absence of a reliable fourth or fifth estate portends the breakdown of democracy. But that is where we are in danger of heading in Canada and likely where things are already in United States.

1. A wonderfully written history of the early days of the Globe and Mail is contained in Mark Gourrie’s recent book “Big Men Fear Me” which is a chronicle of the life and death of George McCullagh who was publisher of the Globe and Mail from 1936 to his suicide in 1952.