The Gazette (Montreal)

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For other uses of "The Gazette", see The Gazette.

Offices of The Gazette on Saint Catherine Street in Montreal

The Gazette, often called the Montreal Gazette to avoid ambiguity, is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Montreal, Quebec.

In 1778, Fleury Mesplet founded a French-language newspaper called La Gazette du commerce et littéraire, pour la ville et district de Montréal. This paper was shut down in 1779, with Mesplet and the editor, Valentin Jautard, being imprisoned. Mesplet began a second weekly in 1785, La Gazette de Montréal, which was the direct ancestor of today's Montreal Gazette. The Gazette has evolved from a French-language newspaper to a dual French-English format to the present English-only paper.

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 Montreal Star. The Gazette was second in circulation to the Star, which sold more newspapers in the city and had a significant national reputation in the first half of the 20th century. The Herald closed in 1957, after publishing for 146 years. The Montreal Star, part of the FP 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 Daily News adopted a tabloid format and introduced a Sunday edition, forcing The Gazette to respond. After the Daily News folded in 1989, after less than two years in operation, The Gazette kept its Sunday edition going.

In 1968, The Gazette was acquired by the Southam newspaper chain, which owned major dailies across Canada. 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. Today, The Gazette's audience is primarily the anglophone and allophone communities which account for about 47 per cent of the population of the Island of Montreal. Many francophones also read English; more than half of the population of Montreal is bilingual. In recent years The Gazette has stepped up efforts to reach bilingual francophone (French mother tongue) professionals and adjusted its "culture" coverage accordingly. It competes with the three French-language dailies published in Montreal – La Presse, Le Journal de Montréal, and Le Devoir.