The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail is a Canadian newspaper that is printed in five cities across western and central Canada. As of 2024, it has a weekly readership of over 6 million, making it the most widely read newspaper in Canada on weekdays and Saturdays. However, it trails slightly behind the Toronto Star in total weekly circulation because the Star publishes a Sunday edition, while the Globe does not. Some people consider the Globe and Mail to be Canada's "newspaper of record."

Predecessors and establishment

The newspaper's roots go back to the 19th century. Its predecessors were The Globe, founded in 1844, and The Daily Mail and Empire, which was created in 1895 through a merger of The Toronto Mail and The Empire. The Globe was started by Scottish immigrant George Brown, a Father of Confederation, as a weekly party newspaper for his Reform Party.

Brown soon aimed for a broader audience of liberal-minded readers and chose a quotation from Junius as the editorial page's motto, which still appears there today. By the 1850s, The Globe had become a respected daily paper, and after Confederation it began distributing by rail to other Ontario cities. In the early 1900s, it added photography, a women's section, and the slogan "Canada's National Newspaper," which remains on its front page. It also opened bureaus and offered subscriptions across the country.

The Daily Mail and Empire came from a merger of two conservative papers: The Toronto Mail, founded in 1872, and The Empire, founded in 1887 by Conservative politician and former Prime Minister John A. Macdonald. In 1936, The Globe and The Mail and Empire merged to form The Globe and Mail, a deal arranged by George McCullagh, who fronted for mining magnate William Henry Wright. At the time, The Globe had a circulation of 78,000, while The Mail and Empire had 118,000, leading press reports to say "the minnow swallowed the whale."

1930s–1990s

From 1937 to 1974, the newspaper was produced at the William H. Wright Building in Toronto. McCullagh died by suicide in 1952, and the paper was sold to the Webster family of Montreal. As it lost ground to the Toronto Star locally, it expanded its national circulation. The newspaper unionized in 1955 under the American Newspaper Guild.

In 1965, it was bought by Winnipeg-based FP Publications, which emphasized the Report on Business section launched in 1962, building the paper's reputation as a voice for Toronto's business community. The paper moved to 444 Front Street West in 1974, a building that had been the Toronto Telegram's headquarters. It stayed there until 2016, when it moved to the Globe and Mail Centre.

FP Publications and the Globe were sold in 1980 to the Thomson Corporation, run by Kenneth Thomson's family. After that, more attention was paid to national and international news on the editorial, op-ed, and front pages, rather than focusing mainly on Toronto and Ontario. Since the 1980s, the paper has been printed in separate editions in six Canadian cities: Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Estevan (Saskatchewan), Calgary, and Vancouver.

In 1982, Southern Ontario Newspaper Guild employees took their first strike vote at the Globe, but negotiations ended without a strike, and the unit remains strike-free. In 1994, SONG members voted to leave the American-focused Newspaper Guild and later affiliated with another union. In 2001, the paper merged with broadcast assets from BCE Inc. to form Bell Globemedia. The Thomson family, through its holding company the Woodbridge Company, regained direct control of the newspaper in 2010 and bought BCE's remaining stake in 2015.