A Quick Look at Who They Are Today
The Globe and Mail is the closest thing Canada has to a national newspaper. Most mornings, people in coffee shops from Halifax to Victoria open its pages or tap on their phones to read it. It’s not the loudest voice online and it’s not the cheapest paper at the counter, but when something big happens in this country—election results, a trade deal, a hockey scandal—people still want to know what The Globe thinks.
Right now, more than six million Canadians read it every week. That’s a huge number for a country of forty million. The paper comes out six days a week, printed in five cities so it feels fresh wherever you live. It has always cared more about business news than any other Canadian paper, and its Report on Business section is basically required reading for anyone who wears a suit to work. Behind the scenes, the Thomson family owns it through their company Woodbridge. They don’t shout about it, but they’ve kept the place alive for decades while many other papers disappeared.
How It All Started Back in 1844
Picture Toronto when it was still called York. Muddy streets, horses everywhere, and a young Scottish immigrant named George Brown who was mad about politics. In 1844 he started a weekly paper called The Globe to push his ideas—mostly that regular people should have more say and that the powerful families running everything needed a kick. It was fiery stuff. Within a few years he turned it into a daily because people couldn’t get enough.
George Brown was loud, stubborn, and brilliant. He helped create Canada itself—he was one of the Fathers of Confederation—but he never stopped running his paper. The Globe became the voice of the Reform movement and later the Liberal Party. If you wanted to know what the reformers were thinking in the 1800s, you read The Globe.
The Wild Merger That Created The Globe and Mail
Fast-forward to the Great Depression. Newspapers were dying left and right. In Toronto there were two big conservative papers—The Mail and Empire and the old Globe, which was struggling. A mining millionaire named William Henry Wright decided he didn’t want Toronto to lose its serious voice. He put up the money, and a young hotshot publisher named George McCullagh put the deal together.
In 1936 they smashed the two papers into one and called it The Globe and Mail. McCullagh stood on the steps of the old building and promised the new paper would be independent, classy, and national. He kept that promise until he died way too young. That merger saved the paper and gave Canada something it never really had before: a single serious newspaper that tried to speak for the whole country, not just one city or one party.
The Thomson Family Takes Over
After the war, the paper changed hands a few times. In 1980 it landed with the Thomson family—quiet billionaires from Ontario who already owned dozens of papers around the world. They didn’t mess with the soul of the place. They just made sure the lights stayed on.
In the early 2000s they teamed up with Bell Canada for a while, but by 2015 the Thomsons bought back full control. They’re private, low-key people. You won’t see them on magazine covers, but they write the cheques that keep reporters on planes to Ottawa, Washington, or Beijing when news breaks.
Inside the Company Today
The Globe and Mail lives in a shiny new building on King Street in Toronto with its name in giant letters on top. About 650 people work there—reporters, editors, designers, coders, ad salespeople. The newsroom is open and bright, with big screens showing what stories are trending. Everyone knows the budget is tight like everywhere else in media, but there’s still pride in the air.
They’re private, so exact numbers are hard to pin down, but the company probably brings in a couple hundred million dollars a year, mostly from digital subscriptions now. The print edition still matters—especially on Saturdays—but the future is clearly the app and the website behind the paywall.
What You Actually Get When You Open the Paper
Monday to Friday the paper is thick with business news. Report on Business is usually twenty pages of stocks, deals, and long stories about companies you’ve never heard of but suddenly care about. Then there’s the front section with politics, world news, and whatever scandal is burning up Ottawa that week.
Weekends are different. Saturday’s edition is fat and relaxed—long features, book reviews, recipes, real estate porn. It’s the one people linger over with a second coffee. There’s never been a regular Sunday paper, except once during the Vancouver Olympics when they couldn’t resist.
The Digital Leap That Almost Didn’t Happen
The Globe was late to the internet party. They put up a basic website in the mid-90s, but for years it was just stories dumped online for free. By the time they realized that was suicide, other sites were eating their lunch. In 2012 they finally built a proper paywall called Globe Unlimited. A lot of readers grumbled, but enough paid that it worked.
Today the website and apps look sharp. They post breaking news fast, but the big investigative pieces and smart columns still feel like they belong in print first. It’s a balancing act most papers never figured out. The Globe mostly has.
Report on Business: The Section Everyone Steals From
If you only know one thing about The Globe, it’s probably ROB. Launched in the 1960s, it became the place where Bay Street and Bay Street wannabes went every morning. Other papers have business sections, but none come close to the depth. When a CEO quits or a pipeline gets approved, the first call reporters make is often to ROB writers because they know the file cold.
Once a month they turn part of it into a glossy magazine full of rich lists and long profiles. It’s catnip for the business class and a cash cow for the advertising department.
The People Who Run the Show
David Walmsley has been editor-in-chief since 2014. He’s a calm British guy who believes good journalism costs money and is worth paying for. Publisher Andrew Saunders handles the business side and keeps the Thomson family happy.
Out in the newsroom you’ve got familiar bylines—Robyn Doolittle who broke the Rob Ford crack video story, André Picard on health, John Ibbitson on politics. Some columnists like Andrew Coyne make half the country cheer and the other half throw the paper across the room. That’s when you know they’re doing something right.
Where The Globe Stands Politically
Calling The Globe conservative is too simple, but it’s not wrong. For decades it backed the old Progressive Conservative party, then Stephen Harper’s new Conservatives most elections. In 2015 and 2021 it surprisingly told readers to vote Liberal, which shocked everyone. Lately it’s been tough on Justin Trudeau again.
Socially it’s more small-l liberal than people expect—pro-gay marriage early, pro-safe injection sites, pro-immigration. It loves free trade like a religion. If you mix Bay Street economics with downtown Toronto values, you get roughly The Globe’s worldview.
Big Moments That Made People Talk
In 2010 they spent a fortune redesigning the paper with colour on every page and giant photos. Half the readers called it beautiful; the other half called it USA Today North and cancelled. Most came back.
Margaret Wente, a longtime columnist, got caught lifting phrases from other writers in 2012. It was messy and public. The paper admitted mistakes but kept her on until she retired years later.
Lately they’ve been huge boosters of something called the Century Initiative—this plan to grow Canada’s population to 100 million by 2100. A lot of readers love it; a lot think it’s nuts.
The Future: Still Figuring It Out Like Everyone Else
Print circulation keeps sliding, but slower than most papers because the audience is older and richer. Digital subscriptions grow every quarter. Podcasts, newsletters, events—they’re trying everything that might work.
The biggest question is the same one every newsroom asks: how do you pay reporters enough to do expensive, slow journalism when social media wants everything free and instant? The Globe’s answer so far is simple—make readers pay because the work is worth it. So far, enough agree to keep the lights on.
Why It Still Matters After 180 Years
Canada is a big, spread-out country with different languages and histories in every province. Having one paper that at least tries to cover the whole place seriously still means something. When the Prime Minister wants to explain a new policy, he’ll still sit down with The Globe. When a premier is in trouble, they sweat about what The Globe will say tomorrow.
It’s not perfect. Sometimes it feels too Toronto, too corporate, too cozy with the powerful. But on its best days it asks the questions the rest of us want answered and prints answers we can trust. In a world of screaming headlines and disappearing newsrooms, that feels almost miraculous. As long as people care what happens to this country, they’ll probably keep caring what The Globe and Mail has to say about it.