Hugh Graham, 1st Baron Atholstan
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Hugh Graham, 1st Baron Atholstan (July 18, 1848 – January 28, 1938), was a Canadian newspaper publisher.
Born in Athelstan (now Hinchinbrooke), Huntingdon County, Quebec, the son of R. W. Graham, a Scottish land owner, Graham was educated at the Huntingdon Academy. After finishing school, he served his apprenticeship under his uncle, E. H. Parsons, a journalist, who published the Commercial Advertiser, and afterwards the Evening Telegraph in Montreal. In 1865, he was appointed Secretary-Treasurer of the Gazette Printing Company. In 1869, along with George T. Lanigan and Marshall Scott founded the Evening Star, a one cent daily. Graham soon acquired full control of the paper.[1]
Graham's publishing business prospered and he became one of the most powerful media executives in Canada. His newspaper's editorials greatly influenced the federal government's decision in 1900 to send troops to participate in the British offensive in the Second Boer War. In 1905, Graham expanded his publishing business with the establishing of the Montreal Standard newspaper.
In 1908, he was invested as a Knight Bachelor (K.B.) by King Edward VII in 1908 and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Law (LL.D.) from the University of Glasgow. In May of 1917 he was created Baron Atholstan, of Huntingdon in the Province of Quebec in the Dominion of Canada and of the City of Edinburgh, by King George V. He is the last person to be granted a peerage on the recommendation of the Canadian government. (see Nickle Resolution)
In 1925, the 77-year-old Graham sold his publications to John W. McConnell. In 1936 he donated the Atholstan Trophy, emblematic of cricket supremacy in eastern Canada.
Hugh Graham married Annie Beekman Hamilton in 1892, with whom he had a daughter, Alice Hamilton Graham. Because he had no male issue, on his death in 1938 the Barony of Atholstan became extinct.
Some people speculate that he had an affair with the much younger Lady Louis Mountbatten, but these claims seem to be unsubstantiated.
Lord Atholstan is interred with his wife in the Mount Royal Cemetery in Montreal.
