Former Globe and Mail publisher A. Roy Megarry holds up a special mock-up edition of The Globe and Mail on Oct. 20, 1979, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Royal York Hotel.Tibor Kolley/The Globe and Mail
Roy Megarry, the brilliant and mercurial publisher of The Globe and Mail who launched the newspaper’s national edition in the 1980s and cemented its position as the country’s leading newspaper, died on Nov. 18 at age 87.
Energetic, opinionated, full of ideas, Mr. Megarry was not the kind of publisher content with overseeing the newspaper’s business operations, leaving the editorial side to journalists and maintaining a low public profile. He reshaped the paper’s editorial leadership and took a firm hand in determining its direction, attracting criticism as well as plaudits, especially after he abruptly replaced the newspaper’s editor in chief and managing editor in 1989.
“He was one of the architects of the modern Globe and Mail,” said Phillip Crawley, who was The Globe’s publisher from the late 1990s to 2023. “Without his dedication to the task of making The Report on Business the strong point of what we do, I don’t think it would have happened. He saw the fact that there was a national appetite for quality business news and information and that The Globe and Mail could fulfill that better than anyone else.”
“Roy Megarry was a restless publisher in the best sense, looking over the hill and worried that a deeply conservative newsroom posed the greatest threat to the newspaper’s sustainability,” William Thorsell, handpicked by Mr. Megarry as The Globe’s editor in chief, wrote in his memoir. Mr. Thorsell was editor in chief from 1989 until 1999.
“Megarry was always a change artist and he was always pushing to bring changes to the paper,” said Jeffrey Simpson, The Globe’s long-time national affairs columnist, now retired. “He would throw things against the wall and see what would stick. You may say he was foolhardy but he was also courageous.”
Archibald Roy Megarry was born on Feb. 10, 1937 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the fifth of six children of Andrew Megarry, a shipyard labourer, and his wife, the former Barbara Bennett. The family lived in a rowhouse off the Shankill Road, a Protestant neighbourhood that Mr. Megarry later described as “by almost any definition a slum.” Roy attended grammar school, where he excelled in math but had to quit at 15 and work to help support his family.
Megarry holds up negative of front page of the first national edition (edition of Oct. 23, 1980) of The Globe and Mail transmitted by satellite, in Montreal on Oct. 22, 1980.Dennis Robinson/The Globe and Ma/The Globe and Mail
In his teens, he joined three friends to form a “skiffle” band, a precursor to the British rock scene of the 1960s. Roy was lead singer. An enthusiastic cyclist, 18-year-old Roy went on a trip south of the border where he and a friend encountered two Canadian girls who were cycling around Ireland to celebrate their high school graduation. One of them was Barbara Todd Bird. Roy was smitten.
The two corresponded and met again the following summer. Mr. Megarry, by then a junior cost accountant at a linen mill, told Barbara he was going to follow his heart and move to Canada. Barbara recalled that she liked Roy a lot but was worried about the implications for both of them. “But he knew what he wanted. It was me and that was it,” she laughed. “When he wants something, he gets it.”
Arriving in Canada in 1956, Mr. Megarry lived with an aunt and uncle in Hamilton, Ont., and landed a payroll job at Stelco. He visited Barbara in Toronto every weekend. But when his aunt discovered that Barbara was Catholic, Roy was told to break off the relationship or get out. He packed up and moved to a boarding house in Toronto. He and Barbara wed in 1958 and Mr. Megarry converted to Catholicism, causing a family rift. But soon after, all that changed and Ms. Megarry said she fully was accepted. “His mother told me that she felt closer to me than to some of her own daughters.”
In 1958, Mr. Megarry got a job at Honeywell Controls, an avionics supplier to the ill-fated Avro Arrow fighter jet. He didn’t have a university degree but studied at night for an accounting designation and impressed his bosses with his diligence and financial skill. In 1963, at 26, he was appointed Honeywell’s controller.
He soon became known as a “fixer” of companies, a quick study who could take a troubled firm and master a turnaround. His financial skills took him to Torstar, parent of The Toronto Star, which hired him in 1974 as vice-president of corporate development, where he diversified the company through the purchase of Harlequin Enterprises, the publisher of romance fiction.
By 1978, at age 41, Mr. Megarry was looking for a change. He was approached by management consultant George Currie, who had been hired to turn around FP Publications, owner of The Globe and Mail. Asked to become The Globe’s publisher, Mr. Megarry jumped at the chance.
What he encountered at The Globe shocked him. Circulation revenue was being tracked by hand. The Report on Business, the newspaper’s money-spinner, was restricted to a maximum 16 pages per day because the editor in chief didn’t want the business pages dominating the paper. He scrapped the rule and launched a Monday business section.
Believing in the potential of electronic publishing, Mr. Megarry inaugurated Info Globe in 1979, described as the world’s first online newspaper database. It included every Globe story published after Nov. 14, 1977, and was marketed initially to business, universities and governments.
He decided that The Globe’s future was to go beyond its Toronto base and become a truly national newspaper, leaning on the strength of the Report on Business, which accounted for half the paper’s profits. Inspired by The Wall Street Journal, the idea was to transmit newspaper pages by satellite to printing plants across Canada and make The Globe available to readers simultaneously from coast to coast.
Former Globe and Mail publisher Roy Megarry and his wife Barbara check on their horses near their Uxbridge, Ont.-area home, on Sept. 15, 2005.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
The Globe’s national edition was launched in October 1980, only months after the paper was acquired by Thomson Newspapers and Mr. Megarry had convinced the company to make the sizable investment needed. The national edition, backed by 35 additional journalists and a network of eight domestic bureaus, was a quick success.
Mr. Megarry was never shy in expressing his views of the paper’s mission. The Globe wasn’t a mass circulation newspaper, but an upscale publication, he told employees in 1987. “As the future unfolds, we will be taking further steps to focus the editorial content of The Globe to better serve the interests of this elite audience.”
He launched an ad campaign that was brazen in its appeal to strivers. “Read up,” it admonished. “Read the paper the boss reads.” A group of rank-and-file journalists was outraged, complaining about the campaign’s “blatant elitism.”
Mr. Megarry took aim at the editorial direction of the newspaper. He clashed with The Globe’s top editor, Norman Webster, a respected journalist and establishment figure (his uncle Howard Webster once owned the paper) and with Geoffrey Stevens, the managing editor. Both have since died. He wrote a memo to Mr. Webster, telling him to eliminate the paper’s Toronto focus and “left-wing bias” by cutting several columnists and slashing coverage of organized labour.
According to what Mr. Webster later recounted, “Megarry didn’t and doesn’t like journalists.” In late 1988, Mr. Megarry told Mr. Webster that he intended to replace him as editor in chief but promised not to make the move public for several weeks. Yet soon after, as Mr. Webster and Mr. Stevens were in the middle of a tour of The Globe’s foreign bureaus, Mr. Megarry called in Mr. Thorsell, the paper’s editorial page writer, on a Sunday afternoon, ostensibly to talk about plans to name him opinion page editor.
Mr. Thorsell expounded on his ideas for the paper, including the need for a redesign. Then, on the spur of the moment, Mr. Megarry offered him Mr. Webster’s job as editor in chief. “It was a complete surprise to me, and I am quite sure, to him,” Mr. Thorsell recalled in his memoir.
Mr. Thorsell decided that Mr. Stevens would have to go too. Within days, both Mr. Webster and Mr. Stevens were gone. Mr. Stevens sued for wrongful dismissal and eventually won a financial settlement. When the dismissals were officially announced, there was shock at The Globe and among many commentators. Toronto Sun columnist Doug Fisher called Mr. Megarry “a rogue publisher.” In Maclean’s, George Bain said he feared that news at The Globe would in future be subordinated to the “bottom line.”
After several high-profile departures of left-leaning writers, Mr. Thorsell focused on a redesign of the newspaper. Launched in 1990, it included a whole new look for The Globe, including replacement of its 147-year-old Gothic script nameplate with a contemporary masthead.
In 1992, after 14 years as The Globe’s publisher, Mr. Megarry retired from the position. Still in his 50s, he dedicated himself to Third World development. Before leaving, he asked for a small office in The Globe and Mail building from where he directed the charity Tools for Development, a program which collected used equipment like drills and computers donated by Canadian companies and sent them to craftspeople and small businesses in developing nations.
The charity, associated with Care Canada, was active in Peru and Jamaica. The equipment was financed with microcredit loans, which Mr. Megarry believed provided better incentives for success than simply giving the gear away.
Mr. Megarry remained close to The Globe and returned to fill the job of publisher for a brief period after the rapid ouster of his successor, an executive from Campbell Soup. A few years later, in 1998, Mr. Crawley turned to Mr. Megarry for advice soon after he was hired as publisher to prepare The Globe for the launch of its new rival, The National Post. “He became a very helpful presence for me,” Mr. Crawley recalled. “Roy had terrific connections with people right across Canada” and organized a series of dinners for the new publisher in Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal.
“People respected his business acumen,” Mr. Crawley continued. “Roy was pretty convinced that what sells The Globe from a brand point of view and from a readership point of view on a national basis was business.” By contrast, he had little interest in sports coverage and dedicated few resources to it.
“As a finance guy, he understood the numbers, so when times turned tough, he showed a degree of ruthlessness,” Mr. Crawley said. While the national edition soared and the Report on Business launched a successful magazine, other Megarry-inspired ventures failed. A stable of magazines dedicated to travel, fashion, food and big cities all were closed. A Toronto Metro edition was tried and shuttered.
Mr. Megarry was named an officer of the Order of Canada in 1993 for his work with Tools for Development.
Mr. Megarry leaves his wife, Barbara; children, Andrew, Kevin and Lianne; as well as eight grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren, one sister and one brother. His grandson Greg predeceased him.
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