This week in Canadian media history: Evening Star launched in Montreal in 1869

First publication of The Evening Star (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

By Eric Mark Do, Reporter

First publication of The Evening Star (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

By Eric Mark Do, Reporter

The first edition of the Evening Star was published on Jan. 16, 1869. Founded in Montreal by Hugh Graham and George Thomas Lanigan, the paper would go through different names before settling on The Montreal Star.

“By the mid 1870s the Star was outselling its competitors and clear of debt,” according to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography's article on Graham. The Star claimed the largest circulation in Canada in 1887 and “remained the best-selling English-language daily in Canada (a position it was to maintain well into the next century).”

The Star was later bought by FP Publications—which also owned papers such as The Globe and Mail and Vancouver Sun. The Star consistently sold more papers than The Gazette but was dealt a devastating blow in 1978, when a strike stopped publication for eight months. While the presses started up again, the paper had lost too many advertisers and readers. Its owner shuttered the paper, and the last edition was published Sept. 25, 1979—110 years after it was founded. 

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