Article

Hugh Graham, Baron Atholstan

Published Online December 16, 2007

Last Edited December 16, 2013

Hugh Graham, Baron Atholstan, newspaper publisher (b at Atholstan, Canada E 18 July 1848; d at Montréal 28 Jan 1938). In 1863 Graham went to work on the Montréal Daily Telegraph and by 1869 became a partner in the new evening paper, the Star.

Graham, Hugh, Baron Atholstan

Hugh Graham, Baron Atholstan, newspaper publisher (b at Atholstan, Canada E 18 July 1848; d at Montréal 28 Jan 1938). In 1863 Graham went to work on the Montréal Daily Telegraph and by 1869 became a partner in the new evening paper, the Star. He transformed the Star into Canada's largest and most profitable daily, partly through technical innovations such as its overseas cable service and especially through its loyalty to the British imperialist ideal. Partly owing to the Star's pressure, the LAURIER government decided to commit Canadian troops to the SOUTH AFRICAN WAR. For his crusades during WWI (when his home was dynamited by anticonscriptionists), Graham was elevated to the peerage in 1917 as Baron Atholstan of Huntingdon, Qué, and Edinburgh, Scot.