“One flows for B. and M——r warm with praise,
And one for M——o bitter gall displays.”
For B. read Brown (John), the owner of the Gazette; for M——r, Mower (Nahum), the proprietor of the Courant; and M——o for Mungo Kay. Mungo Kay is credited by the Gazette in an obituary notice of him in 1813 on his death on September 18th, as having as editor for nearly seven years justified his choice of motto: “Aninos Novitate Tenebo”—“I will hold attention by means of novelty.” This was not meant to be satire but a tribute to his efforts to obtain the earliest intelligence. The Herald early began its “extra special additions.” In 1812, before it had been a year in existence, the Quebec Gazette reprinted such a special edition with the following acknowledgment:
“We beg the editors of the Herald to accept our thanks for their attention in transmitting the intelligence of the surrender of General Hull. This is not the first time that the public has been indebted to them for early intelligence.”
News in those days was hard to obtain, but even if a month late it was read with avidity, for the Napoleonic wars, involving the peace and security of the mother country and their own colony, which became involved in all British quarrels, found a passionate source of interest in the truly colonial loyalists of Montreal, who were surrounded by ill-wishers, secret or open, on all sides. It is amusing, however, to read the account of the Battle of Waterloo under the single line caption “Highly Interesting Intelligence,” the art of display headlines not then having become so pronounced.
The news of the victory of Waterloo reached Montreal in July, 1815. Montreal in its joy bethought itself of the widows and children of those who fell in the fateful battle and in consequence of a meeting called in the courthouse an amount of £2,717 16s 8d was soon raised, which was later added to largely.
Of local or colonial news, there being little or none, there was scant supply. But after 1815 the Montreal papers begin to have criticisms on matters nearer home. A class of writers now arose, especially in the Herald, the most daring unofficial paper of the period, who dealt ably and trenchantly on questions of policy and administration in Canada. These were written mostly under mythological pseudonyms to avoid personal responsibility and attack. This continued for many years. The anonymity of many has not yet been disclosed in literature, although there must have been many at Montreal to whom the real authorship was an open secret. “Nerva,” who wrote in the Herald much to inflame public opinion, has been disclosed later by the Montreal Gazette in an obituary notice, to have been the Hon. Samuel Gale, afterwards a famous justice of the superior court. Others, like “Aristides,” an early critic of the House of Assembly; “A true Jacobin,” a violent satirist of abuses in the police administration; “Observer,” complaining of extortion and sale of justice by police court officials; “Alfred,” with his suggestion that a strip of land ten miles wide should be laid and kept absolutely waste along the American frontiers as the only real safeguard against renewed invasion after the peace of 1814 (this same writer also protests earnestly against the insidious effects of Webster’s republican spelling book); “Veritas,” with his crushing exposure of the incapacity of Sir George Prevost—these contributed letters, together with outspoken editorial utterances written by Gray or Skakel, causing a fluttering in the dovecots of officialdom.
In 1815 bills of indictment were found against the editor and printer of the Herald for libel on the commander in chief, but as Sir George Prevost was recalled the case never came to trial.
The earliest extant copy known of the Herald is dated March 2, 1812. It was a paper 13 inches by 20½ inches, and contained four pages of four columns, which latter, in 1814, was changed to five. It started with a circulation of 170 subscribers, 150 being Montrealers. On its third anniversary the statement was given in the paper that the “weekly distribution rather exceeds one thousand impressions.” The price was $4.00 per annum. In August a larger sheet appeared, 15 inches wide by 21½ inches deep, and was divided into five columns, the editor calling his paper “a quarter larger than our former or any other paper published in North America,” and adding “The Herald has more circulation, probably by some hundred, than any other paper in Canada.” The enlargement of the sheet, which was followed by frequent supplementary sheets on a Wednesday, indicate the growth of advertising and commercial correspondence, and the immense increase of commerce after the peace. Indeed, at the time an attempt was made to establish a fourth Montreal paper, “The Sun.” Its promoters were Lane, a printer on St. Paul Street, and Bowman, a stationer on St. François Xavier Street. It only lasted a few issues.
Anti-American animadversions, however, still survived. The democratic leaders of the time were accused of being supplied with Yankee money and Yankee ideals. Samuel Sherwood, an American by birth and an early leader for popular government, was accused by the Herald of having given traitorous support and advice to the Americans during the War of 1812 and of keeping the “Sun” and the Canadian Courant supplied with “Jacobin” information from American sources.
A picture of the pigmy city of the period, written in 1870 by Mr. T.S. Brown in a small, forgotten pamphlet entitled “Montreal Fifty Years Ago”, may fitly help to illustrate this period: