Summary of an article about my company

The Evolution of The Gazette as an Official Language Minority Newspaper
by John Kalbfleisch

John Kalbfleisch’s article about The Montreal Gazette explains how the oldest newspaper in Montreal isn’t the most popular because of the language it is written in. Using events that occurred during the 228 year old newspaper’s history, the author unravels some important facts about how the newspaper came to be how it is today. For example, although the French population outranked the English population in the 1970s, The Gazette, Montreal’s only English newspaper,was highly supported. He goes on writing about how The Gazette started out to be a French newspaper and how only literate Montrealers used to read it when it was invented in 1778.

When the Gazette’s creator Fleury Mesplet started his newspaper, he lied about its content. Instead of publishing good-hearted articles as promised, he and his editor, Valentin Jautard, published a newspaper based on their personal thoughts that weren’t always noble. They both ended up in jail. After his three years in prison, Mesplet published The Gazette once again, but this time he wrote good and acceptable articles and the newspaper became bilingual. In 1822, The Gazette’s founder passed awayand his paper was written in English only.

The Gazette, being all English, went through some hard times after the death of Mesplet, since the French population was still dominant. Both the French and English population were in some sort of war about who was dominant throughout the history in Quebec for quite some time and the author shows, using many examples, that The Gazette was highly affected by this history. For example, he explains how the Patriot Movement affected the newspaper in the 1930s. The English community was the only one who was interested in reading The Gazette hence it wasn’t doing very well. Throughout history, this newspaper has had some ups and downs, but in the end The Gazette became Montreal’s oldest newspaper and is very popular.