Image from wikipedia The Montreal Gazette, formerly titled simply The Gazette, began publication in 1778 and is the oldest daily paper in the province of Quebec.
At first, it was in French, but the publisher, Fleury Mesplet, ran into trouble when his paper was deemed an organ for pro-American propaganda. It was shut down when the Revolutionary Americans occupied Montreal in 1779, and Mesplet and an associate were jailed for sedition.
In 1785, Mesplet began a second paper in a French-English bilingual format. Topics covered education and religion, as well as foreign and local news, and later, advertising and announcements.
Politically, the stance of this new Montreal Gazette was anti-clerical; it supported the principles propounded by the French Revolution, and pressed for Quebec to have its own legislature.
After the death of its founder, and then his wife who had published it after him, the paper changed hands a few times. It was bought by the Southam chain in 1968. Today Quebec's only major English language daily is a survivor: after being taken over by Postmedia, it was stopped briefly in 2014, and then relaunched as part of a project called Postmedia Reimagined.
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