The Globe and Mail | History & Facts (2024)

The Globe and Mail, daily newspaper published in Toronto, the most prestigious and influential news journal in Canada.

The paper’s origins can be traced to a liberal newspaper, The Globe, founded in 1844 by a Scottish immigrant, George Brown, and to The Mail, later the Mail and Empire, a conservative paper founded by John A. Macdonald in 1872. The two papers competed until 1936, when George McCullagh bought The Globe. Less than a month later, he bought the Mail and Empire and merged the two as the independent newspaper, The Globe and Mail.

The Globe and Mail sees its role as “independent but not neutral.” Its large staff of foreign correspondents and its foreign news bureaus have given The Globe and Mail’s international coverage great strength. For more than a decade from 1958, its Beijing bureau was the source of China news preferred by most U.S. dailies. In 1999 The Globe and Mail launched the cable television channel ROBTv, which featured business news and opinion, and by the early 21st century the newspaper was publishing several magazines. In 2001 The Globe and Mail was folded into Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc., owned by Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE). In 2010 an 85 percent stake in the newspaper was purchased by the Woodbridge Company Ltd., the majority owner of the information services company Thomson Reuters. Woodbridge acquired the remaining 15 percent of The Globe and Mail in 2015.