Jack Canuck
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| Type | Tabloid newspaper |
|---|---|
| Founder(s) | J. R. Rogers Louisa Rogers |
| Founded | July 29, 1911 |
| Language | English |
| City | Toronto |
| Country | Canada |
Jack Canuck was a Canadian tabloid newspaper founded in Toronto by J. R. Rogers and his wife Louisa Rogers. The first issue appeared on July 29, 1911, as a biweekly publication, and it became a weekly in February 1912. The newspaper combined muckraking, political and social commentary, crime stories, gossip and sensationalism, and developed a readership extending beyond Toronto.[1]
The Rogerses founded Jack Canuck following the death of their son in a Toronto isolation hospital in 1910. J. R. Rogers became a critic of the city's public-health system and used the newspaper to campaign on issues including infant mortality, vaccination, working conditions and municipal government. The paper's motto was "Truth and Justice".[1]
Jack Canuck developed into a sensationalist weekly with a populist editorial outlook. Its contents included police-court stories, personal gossip, mining-stock tips and campaigns against corruption and exploitation. It employed correspondents outside Toronto in an effort to build a national readership, while its reporting and personal attacks also resulted in libel actions and complaints to provincial authorities.[1]
J. R. Rogers died in the sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915 while travelling to Europe to report on conditions facing Canadian soldiers during the First World War. Louisa Rogers continued the newspaper after his death. In the immediate postwar period, its average weekly circulation was reported to be about 65,000 copies, with sales in Ontario, western Canada and the northern United States.[1]
Louisa Rogers remained proprietor until September 1924. The title was later revived after Hanmer Burt Lloyd and Samuel Lichtman incorporated the McCaul Publishing Company in 1933. Peter Brown subsequently took control of the company and served as editor and publisher. A revived Jack Canuck, which described itself as "Canada's First Tabloid Newspaper", was still being published in 1937.[2]
References
[edit]- 1 2 3 4 Houston, Susan E. (2005). "Sims, Louisa (Rogers)". In Cook, Ramsay; Bélanger, Réal (eds.). Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. XV (1921–1930) (online ed.). University of Toronto Press.
- ↑ Houston, Susan E. (2002). "Language Tabloids in the Interwar Period". Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada. 40 (2).