To mark the Association’s 75th anniversary, Hebdos Québec undertook publication of an eight-volume collective work on the history of the province’s weekly press. The task was assigned to 25 different authors, each of whom focused on a specific Quebec region, seeking to highlight its unique characteristics. The first volume, published in May 2008, covers the Abitibi-Témiscamingue and Outaouais regions, and the subsequent volumes will be released during 2009.
Besides these eight volumes, the authors have written a history of the Association from its founding until the 1980s (the more recent portions will be completed in the future). The following subsections outline the key stages of that history.
The embryonic stages of an association that would become Hebdos Québec as we know it today date back to 1932, in Trois-Rivières, when a dozen publishers instituted the Association des éditeurs de la presse hebdomadaire régionale francophone for the purpose of promoting their interests in Canada. Four years later this organization, headed by Louis Francoeur, became the Association des hebdomadaires de langue française du Canada, earning the industry a degree of reputation and influence outside the rural regions to which it had been confined until that point.
- The Early Days of the Weekly Press
- From the 1932 Association des éditeurs de la presse hebdomadaire régionale francophone to the Association des hebdomadaires de langue française du Canada: The Years 1936–1966
- 1949 to 1957: The Postwar Years; Technological Advances; The Continued Muzzling of the Press
- The 1960s: The New Face of the Weekly Press
- Emancipation of the Press: A Reflection of Society
- The 1970s: Concentration of the Press
- The Conseil de presse and Freedom of the Press
1. The Early Days of the Weekly Press
Quebec’s first newspaper was published in 1764, one year after the Treaty of Paris, under which Canada was ceded to the British. The Quebec Gazette still exists today, as the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, and is the oldest North American newspaper still being published. The Gazette subsequently began to be published in Montreal in 1778; though it bore an English name, this newspaper was published in French until 1855. An important characteristic of the written press in Quebec, from its beginnings, was its defence of social and political causes. Newspapers formed the vanguard of most of the social, academic, cultural and democratic progress achieved in Quebec.
This tradition and this logical lineage of ideas led to the birth of Quebec’s first daily newspaper, Le Canadien, in 1806. It was soon joined by the Courrier de Québec, the Spectateur and, later, La Minerve, the Courrier de St-Hyacinthe and the Gazette des Trois-Rivières, to name only a few. These newspapers provided forums for pioneering writers to express their opinions on the national issues of the day. Daily newspapers tended to be the newsgathering publications at the time, while the pages of the weeklies were reserved for spiritual matters and intellectual pursuits. In the early 19th century, the semainiers, as weeklies were known, contributed to the education of a mostly rural people. Ludger Duvernay founded the Gazette des Trois-Rivières in 1817, marking the birth of the first regional weekly (i.e., published outside the major urban centres, Quebec City and Montreal, where the first weeklies were founded in 1764 and 1785 respectively).
Journalism in the years 1860–1900 was highly politicized: dailies and periodicals were backed by different parties. A newspaper would generally support one or other of the two major political movements (Liberal red or Conservative blue), and the authors of articles were very often the source of virulent controversies. The shift from partisan opinion to news reporting began during the years 1884 to 1919. Printers, who were often the owners of the newspapers, realized that “in order for their publications to be more accessible, they had to adapt and attract larger numbers of readers to ensure profitability—not through proceeds from the sale of papers, but the value they represented for advertisers.”1 A number of diocesan weeklies appeared during this time, to counter the liberalization of a large number of dailies.
During the Depression years, rural communities were isolated. To counter the isolation of readers in the backcountry, the weekly press published opinion pieces and apostolic messages. The typical regional weekly was a family business, written, edited and printed during downtime at the local printer’s. The stock market crash of 1929 had undermined the vast majority of these already shaky businesses, which were still reluctant to embrace modernity. Small-town weeklies were still made up of three so-called grand format (“broadsheet,” 18.5 x 24 in.) pages, printed on both sides.
“The weekly was the defender of French-Canadian traditions, perfectly in harmony with the sermons of the Catholic Church. Typically unprofitable, isolated and a lowly customer of the small printing press adjacent to the local market square, the rural newspaper tried its best to survive in the years leading up to the Second World War. Framed advertisements, still a rarity, provided only supplementary revenue; the paper subsisted on sales of copies and subscriptions.”2
1. Longeval, Jean, “La Presse hebdomadaire régionale du Québec,” paper given on November 15, 1989, at the Conférences Ouest-France. Association des éditeurs de la presse hebdomadaire régionale francophone.
2. Malo, Jean-Pierre, “Histoire de l’association des hebdomadaires régionaux francophone du Québec,” unpublished manuscript.
2. From the 1932 Association des éditeurs de la presse hebdomadaire régionale francophone to the Association des hebdomadaires de langue française du Canada: The Years 1936–1966
In 1932, at an initial meeting held in Trois-Rivières, a dozen weekly newspaper editors decided to join forces and found an organization to promote their interests in Canada: the Association des éditeurs de la presse hebdomadaire régionale francophone. On a Saturday in October 1932, Louis Francoeur was elected the association’s first president and, in a sign of the times, a letter was dispatched to Pius XI by its founding directors, asking for a papal blessing. In 1936, the Association des hebdomadaires de langue française du Canada was incorporated, and this name was used until 1966. Some notable personages were members of that first board of directors, including senators Jules-Édouard Prévost, publisher of L’Avenir du Nord, and Gustave Lacasse, publisher of the Tecumseh, Ontario, weekly La Feuille d’Érable, and Louis-Arthur Giroux, later a legislative councillor under Maurice Duplessis. The Association allowed rural communities to emerge from isolation, and became a catalyzing force for the recognition of weeklies by governments and advertising agencies.
| 1948 Convention, Arvida |
 |
| Ernest Gagné, Vice-President, Edward Gervais, President, Raymond Douville, Secretary-Treasurer, Lionel Bertrand, Adrien Bégin, Aimé Gagné, Paul Tremblay |
The weekly format: 1940 to 1950
After finding their direction, weeklies sought to improve their gains. In the earliest days of the Association, one of their founding members, Albert Gervais, had observed the following: “A newspaper is a business, like any other. Indeed it is one of the most complex businesses imaginable. Thus it is imperative that we conduct our commercial affairs methodically and in the most orderly possible fashion.”1 In the years before and after the Second World War, the Association doubled its strength: there were 22 members in 1932 and 46 in 1939, and their ranks had swelled to 80 by 1949. Membership would remain at 80 weeklies until 1970. From promotion of family farming to the clearing of new lands, from small privately owned business to the cooperative movement under Maurice Duplessis’s Union Nationale, alliances between politics and local business gained more and more advocates. Partnership with the CWNA (Canadian Weekly Newspapers Association) enabled the Association to be present at debates and to draw inspiration from the know-how of its elder sibling (the CWNA had been founded in 1919). More important, this partnership allowed the Association to share in the privileged contacts that the CWNA maintained with Canada’s advertising agencies. Up to that point, the daily newspapers had enjoyed the lion’s share of advertising by large corporations. Since the partnership enabled the Association to benefit from governmental “Victory Loan” advertising budgets, newspaper advertising was now more equitably apportioned among dailies and weeklies.
The new revenue created by advertising allowed weeklies to hire more qualified staff. In those days, articles were very often written under a pseudonym, or else had no byline at all. Rather than providing objective news coverage, as the majority of daily newspapers did at the time, the provincial weeklies remained mostly focused on partisan politics, religious morals, education and entertainment.
1. Anonymous, excerpted from “Rétrospective sur les années 1936-1949,” Album Souvenir de nos premiers vingt-cinq ans 1932-1957. Les hebdomadaires de langue française du Canada, 1958.
3. 1949 to 1957: The Postwar Years; Technological Advances; The Continued Muzzling of the Press
The postwar years would see remarkable changes. Selling for five cents a copy, the 16- to-20-page broadsheet weeklies benefited from a growing number of improved printing and photo reproduction techniques. With the advent of offset printing,1 newspapers became increasingly distinct from printers, and more specialized. Thanks to this new technique, a newspaper publisher no longer had to own a printing plant.
Around half the content of a typical weekly was made up of local and national advertisements, which continually grew in number (ad layouts were done by specialized agencies). Most ads were prominently positioned below the articles. “Since the newspapers had practically no reporters, they had to come up with something to fill the large spaces between commercial advertisements….”2 In those days, local elites, both political and ecclesiastical, were still well represented in the pages of weeklies, but they gradually made way for sports news, society pages and columns aimed at women.
1951 convention, Shawinigan
|
 |
| Adrien Bégin (l.), outgoing president, congratulates the new president of the Association des Hebdos de Langue française du Canada, Gérard Brady |
In 1951, membership in the Association reached the magic number of 100; indeed, there were 106 members counting French-language weeklies published outside Quebec. That same year, at the Association’s convention, the annual concours des hebdos (weeklies competition) was instituted; the Association was welcomed by Camillien Houde, the Mayor of Montreal; Paul-Émile Léger, the Catholic Archbishop of Montreal, presided over the opening of the biannual convention; and Adrien Bégin, the President, represented the Association on the first-ever Air Canada flight from Montreal to Paris. Conventions began to be held outside Quebec: the 1954 gathering was held in Winnipeg, and the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific railways transported 95 delegates in exchange for free advertising and complimentary accounts.
Advertising income changed the rules of the game. The phenomenon of isolation worsened. Among the publishers, ethical considerations about the contents of their pages emerged: there was a pressing need to educate members in order to deal with a variety of problems, ranging from a lack of originality to outright plagiarism. Efforts to raise awareness of copyright principles were ratified with the signing of an agreement with the Société des gens de Lettres (literary society) to ensure that all reproduction fees were duly paid. Plagiarism had been frequent up to that point.
1. “Technique in which the inked image on a printing plate is imprinted on a rubber cylinder and then transferred (i.e., offset) to paper.” Britannica Concise Encyclopedia (viewed Nov. 28, 2008).
2. Malo, Jean-Pierre, “Histoire de l’association des hebdomadaires régionaux francophone du Québec,” unpublished manuscript.
The 1960s: The New Face of the Weekly Press
“With the postwar boom years, mass consumption emerged. The weekly newspaper became part of the national advertising network. Regionalism and local entrepreneurship went hand-in-hand. The days of the strictly rural press came to an end, as the newspaper company made its entry onto the Montreal market.”1
 |
The first group of participants in the journalism courses given in the International Civil Aviation Organization building at 1080 University Street in Montreal |
A key phenomenon in the journalism environment of the 1960s was the depoliticizing of the dailies: this became apparent in their layout, section titles and content. Commentary became more restrained and editors avoided excessively clear-cut stances. This trend was inherited from the English-language press, anchored in the principle of the objectiveness of facts, and was somewhat removed from Québécois cultural mores, which leaned more toward nuance and emotion: the Latin influence on francophone Quebec society tends to favour more subjective criticism of facts and people. These principles, adopted by the regional weeklies, spurred debate during the journalism training courses taken by various members of the Association at Université de Montréal. They were taught by the likes of Jacques Parizeau, then a professor at the École des Hautes Études Commerciales business school, and René Lévesque, then a Radio-Canada commentator, as well as the directors of the Montreal dailies La Presse and Le Devoir. In a bid to improve both the form and content of regional weeklies, mobile workshops were instituted in 1961. They covered all major aspects of newspaper production, aiming to improve quality, profitability and writing, optimize the gathering and delivery of news, and perfect photographic, graphic design and layout techniques. They also covered local advertising, printing techniques and administrative methods.
 |
| A group of writers enrolled in the first introductory journalism course given at Université de Montréal |
Given that there was already something of a rift between news and information as provided by dailies versus weeklies, the most appropriate option was to offer readers what Yves Michaud termed “different merchandise” than what the daily press provided:
“Which is tantamount, in short, to repoliticizing—in the broadest sense of the word—the regional newspapers, to lending them an original character, accentuating their positions on all of the issues that make the news on the scale of local, regional, provincial, national and even international life.”2
.
1. Longeval, Jean, “La Presse hebdomadaire régionale du Québec,” paper given on November 15, 1989, at the Conférences Ouest-France. Association des éditeurs de la presse hebdomadaire régionale francophone.
2. Michaud, Yves, “La presse régionale : Problèmes actuels et Perspectives d’avenir,” course notes for the journalism training course, Université de Montréal, Montreal, fourth training course, November 8, 9 and 10. 1960, V-5.
NB : est-ce que ceci veut dire “volume 5”? Si oui, mettre “vol. 5”.
5. Emancipation of the Press: A Reflection of Society
 |
| Congrès au Manoir Richelieu de 1960 en présence de M. Jean Lesage |
There had been harbingers, in the preceding decades, of the “interior transformations” that took place in the 1960s. The feudalist political structure of the regime of Premier Maurice Duplessis regime, which held sway over a poor, largely rural province, had crushed citizens, protected the local economy and developed foreign investment. The 1948 Refus global, signed by prominent artists, called for the elimination of the Catholic Church’s tyrannical regime: 10 years later, the repercussions were tangible. At the dawn of the 1960s, Quebec still had no national library; the dissemination of French-Canadian culture continued to be subjugated by religious dogma. Singers like Gilles Vigneault, Félix Leclerc, Raymond Lévesque and Pauline Julien were voices of nascent Québécois nationalism. Quebec’s modern era was ushered in on June 22, 1960, when Jean Lesage became Premier. His political program initiated the campaign to overcome the resistance to change characteristic of previous governments, and signalled the start of the “Quiet Revolution.” This period saw widespread infrastructure development: massive highway construction; the creation of organizations aimed at expanding the provincial economy; the nationalization of electric power, formalized in 1963 with the founding of Hydro-Québec; as well as the creation of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and the Bibliothèque nationale du Québec en 1967, and Université du Québec à Montréal in 1968. The transition to a welfare state began: the State would henceforth be responsible for public health and education, with secular university graduates replacing members of religious orders on the staffs of hospitals and schools. The 1967 World’s Fair opened Quebecers’ eyes to their savoir-faire and their potential.1
 |
Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson with Lionel Bertrand, Minister of Tourism, Hunting and Fishing in Jean Lesage’s provincial cabinet.
At the Quebec weeklies convention, held at the Manoir Richelieu on August 15, 16 and 17, 1963, Mr. Pearson gave a speech about the growing U.S. cultural and economic threat and the measures being taken by Canada to defend and ensure the dissemination of its bilingual cultural heritage |
In this modernizing context, the weekly press continued to evolve. A digest program began to air on Radio-Canada, consisting of news published in a variety of regional newspapers; thus the weeklies became a tool for effective, widespread communication of various goings-on all over Quebec. Topics often addressed local history, highlighting the intellectual emergence of particular regions. Accounts of literary and artistic life, along with commentaries on exhibitions, social events, initiatives and local colour, were presented in lively and descriptive fashion.
In 1966, the Association des hebdomadaires de langue française du Canada was renamed Les Hebdos du Canada, signalling “the shift from rural to urban, from weekly opinion broadsheet to regional newsweekly.”2 The weeklies’ commercial orientation had borne fruit, therefore their format and the quality of their contents had to be rethought so as to attract advertising clients. Yves Michaud’s inventory of the early 1960s revealed that out of 97 weeklies, 69 had switched to tabloid format. This format is easier to hold and its smaller size made it easier to sell full-page advertisements. Readers also viewed the tabloid as more modern.
1. Lambert, Phyllis, “Preface: Interior Transformations,” in The 60s: Montreal Thinks Big, ed. André Lortie, Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture; Vancouver and Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre, 2004, pp. 15–19.
2. Malo, Jean-Pierre, “Histoire de l’association des hebdomadaires régionaux francophone du Québec,” unpublished manuscript.
6. The 1970s: Concentration of the Press
In the 1970s, the transformative era in Quebec reached its peak; the government intervened in all social, economic and educational spheres. Women and labour unions gained prominence and power. The concerns of the weekly press in this period were cold-type technology, the cost of newsprint, the fact that weeklies had evolved into media companies that required administration, free distribution (which some publishers conducted in certain neighbourhoods) and, above all, concentration and freedom of the press. The proliferation of both dailies and weeklies was no longer “good news”; the phenomenon of media concentration resulted in distribution of increasingly biased information by these monopolies.
“Concentration is the economic and financial process typical of a market affected simultaneously by a reduction in the number of players and an increase in the scope of the remaining ones. […] In the media industry, the concept of concentration is two-dimensional: concentration of ownership of media undertakings on the one hand, and concentration of editorial content on the other; the latter may stem from the former.”1
The phenomenon, though it had not yet truly taken hold among Quebec weeklies at the close of the 1960s, was nonetheless the subject of important commissions of inquiry. The Quebec National Assembly examined the issue of freedom of the press in 1969, and a Royal Commission of the Canadian Senate (the Davey Commission, 1970) looked into concentration in the mass media. Throughout the 1970s, concentration grew among the weeklies as well, shaking the foundations of the “presse de province.”
NB : le comité Davey n’avait pas encore vu le jour en 1968… Certaines sources consultées parlent de 1969, date de la formation du comité; la plupart utilisent 1970, date de publication du rapport Davey, donc nous avons choisi 1970.)
“A month earlier, bowing to public opinion, the Government of Quebec had instituted a special legislature committee to examine the problems of freedom of the press, the first of its kind in Quebec. Its members included National Assembly members Yves Michaud, Robert Bourassa, Pierre Laporte and Jean Lesage. Though the committee’s work would eventually go unfinished, it suggested that the State intervene by introducing control mechanisms and enacting legislation to prevent media monopolies. It also called for the creation of a press council and the holding of a royal commission of inquiry.”2
The 1970 Davey Report concluded that government intervention was required in the daily newspaper industry to counter an exceedingly high concentration of ownership. While it avoided generalizations about the nature of a newspaper’s ownership versus its editorial quality, the Commission concluded that too many media undertakings were publishing products of quality inferior to what they could be producing, given the profitability of their operations. Certain proposals were then made on the subject of State intervention to curb concentration.
1. Raboy, Marc, Les médias québécois: presse, radio, télévision, inforoute, 2d ed., Montréal: Gaëtan Morin, 2000, p. 386.
2. “Inévitable la concentration?” Archives de Radio-Canada, viewed April 22, 2007.
7. The Conseil de presse and Freedom of the Press
| Signing of the agreement creating the Conseil de presse |
 |
| Seen here are representatives of the four groups that signed the agreement creating the Conseil de presse du Québec. L. to r.: Gilles Gariépy, President, Quebec Professional Journalists Federation; Pierre Dansereau, President, Association des Quotidiens du Québec; Ferdinand Berthiaume, Vice-President, Association des Hebdos du Canada; and an unidentified representative of the Association canadienne de la radio et de la télévision de langue française. |
The Conseil de presse du Québec (Quebec Press Council) was created in 1973 and immediately asked the government to create an agency to monitor the movements of media corporations. Divergences of opinion among print media groups resulted. The weeklies’ position was as follows:
“Guaranteeing comprehensive news and information for the public depends on the public having access to multiple sources of information. If excessive concentration of media undertakings or a media monopoly were to abnormally limit the sources of information, the public’s right to information and to a free press would be dangerously compromised. People are often tempted to call for the State to intervene in all areas. We are of the opinion that media companies should be left to their own devices, away from any type of State intervention, be it economic or at the level of information. An independent press, even a weak one, will always be superior to a flourishing press that is dependent on governments.”1
A code of ethics had previously been implemented by the Association in 1966, and was for a long time the only such code governing the print media. Its directives had been imposed on all members: the quest for the truth through honest means; communication of the truth while remaining faithful to facts, avoiding any kind of sensationalism or surrender of principle; and respect of journalists and of the public’s rights.2 The publisher members of the Association des hebdos régionaux summed up the code of ethics as “the absolute right of people to form their own opinions and the essential basis for the flourishing of humans in democratic society.”3
Without doubt, the best way for the State to play its role was still to guarantee the exercising of freedom of the press and the public’s right to be informed.
The pursuit of profitability continued unabated: free distribution and circulars transformed the weekly press landscape once again. From a small number in the early 1970s, they became the norm ten years later. Advertising remained the only means of covering the increasingly high cost of producing newspapers, which were changing, as were their readers. Consumers were buying more and more products and services, and the free weeklies arriving in their mailboxes each week provided purchasing advice. Over a 20-year period, distribution figures exploded, and an entire micro-economy grew as a result. The regional weekly press responded to the fact that dailies did not satisfy the demand for local news and information. Regional weeklies covered realities distinct from those of the major urban centres: by concentrating on local issues, these papers allowed their readers to come together, established a permanent connection to the communities around them and, as a result, became active agents for change. The other important distinguishing feature of the weekly press was its tradition of consensus.
NB : la phrase « La publicité qui reste le seul moyen...» étant incomplète, nous avons traduit du mieux que nous pouvions (en enlevant le «qui» devant «reste le seul moyen» on obtient une phrase grammaticalement correcte).
In 1972, the Association des hebdos du Canada became the Association des éditeurs de la presse hebdomadaire régionale francophone, more familiarly referred to as Les Hebdos régionaux, and opened its first administrative offices in Old Quebec City.
Trivia: What was the first free weekly in Quebec? Le Mascoutain, in 1954. What was the first free weekly to be accepted by members? La Voix populaire de Saint-Henri, en 196
NB : l’année est incomplète (sur le site en FR aussi).
1. Jean-Paul Légaré, journalist secretary of the Hebdos, excerpted from Malo, Jean-Pierre, “Histoire de l’association des hebdomadaires régionaux francophone du Québec,” unpublished manuscript.
2. Anonymous, “Profil de la presse hebdomadaire régionale francophone au Québec,” document for presentation produced by the Association des hebdos régionaux, November 1987, membership criteria quoted in Appendix 2.
3. Excerpted from Radio-Canada, “Congrès des Hebdos à Chicoutimi,” July 31, 1966.