Montreal Star

SS undefined

The Montreal Star was an English-language Canadian newspaper published in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It folded in 1979 following an eight-month pressmen's strike.

It was Canada's largest newspaper until the 1950s and remained the dominant English-language newspaper in Montreal until its closure.

History
The paper was founded on January 16, 1869 by Hugh Graham, 1st Baron Atholstan and George T. Lanigan as the Montreal Evening Star. He would run the newspaper for nearly 70 years. In 1877, The Evening Star became known as The Montreal Daily Star.

By 1915, the Montreal Star dominated the English-language evening newspaper market in Montreal. Hugh Graham was able to run his newspaper's competitors out of business, thus assuring control of the English-language market.

In 1925, Graham sold the Montreal Star to John Wilson McConnell, but continued to be in charge of the newspaper until his death in 1938. Two other newspapers, the Montreal Standard and Family Herald, were under the same ownership.

Beginning in the 1940s, The Montreal Star became very successful, its circulation was nearly 180,000 copies and it remained around that level for approximately thirty years.

In 1951, the Montreal Star launched its Weekend Magazine supplement, with an initial circulation of 900,000.

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

In 1978, a strike by pressmen (printers' union) began and lasted eight months. Although the strike was settled in February 1979 and the Star resumed publication, it had lost readers and advertisers to the rival paper The Gazette, and shut down permanently only a few months later on September 25, 1979. The Gazette acquired the Star's building, presses, and archives, and became the sole English-language daily in Montreal. Prior to the strike the Star had consistently out-sold The Gazette.

The newspaper ceased publication only a few months after another Montreal daily, MontrÃ©al-Matin, stopped the presses. These closings left many Montrealers concerned.

Notable contributors
It was the first newspaper in Canada to employ a staff editorial cartoonist, when it hired Henri Julien in 1888.

Its sports editor Harold Atkins, writing under the column 'Sports Snippings', nicknamed both Maurice Richard as the "Rocket" and the wheelchair basketball team as "The Wheelchair Wonders".

Other contributors of note included entertainment writer Michael D. Reid, who went on to become film critic for the Victoria Times-Colonist, Red Fisher, Doris Giller, Nick Auf der Maur, Terry Mosher and Dennis Trudeau, many of whom moved over to The Gazette when the Star folded.

The simultaneous closing of the Star, Calgary Albertan, Winnipeg Tribune, and Ottawa Journal caused the Trudeau government to establish the Kent Commission to examine newspaper monopolies in Canada. Most of Kent's findings and recommendations were ignored.