“Everywhere in Quebec, we were very well received, because we were seen as the newspaper of René Lévesque, which was already immensely popular. There was such dynamism around the Day that I am convinced that it set the table for the election of the Parti Québécois in 1976,” affirms Paule Beaugrand-Champagne, who would subsequently lead a brilliant career in the media, working in almost every newsroom.
On February 28, 1974, exactly half a century ago, the first issue of this new daily appeared in Montreal. This journal is structured around René Lévesque, Jacques Parizeau and Yves Michaud. These leaders of the Parti Québécois believe that in the election of October 29, 1973, their party suffered from a press that was generally hostile to them. But a political group which openly has its nose in a media, as was so often the case in the 19th centurye century or in the first half of the 20the century, is this really a solution? A society of editors, created within the Dayhelps prevent him from being subservient to the party.
Jacques Parizeau is appointed president of the board of directors of this new newspaper. Yves Michaud is responsible for managing it. He is supported in this function by Evelyn Dumas, former parliamentary correspondent for The duty, one of the best nibs of its generation. Around them, we find seasoned information workers, such as Gil Courtemanche, Pierre Godin, Jacques Guay, Pierre Sormany, Alain Pontaut and many others. The newspaper attracts elements of great value. Crowned with several awards, favorably known to a wide public, the photographer Antoine Desilets leaves The Press to join the Day. The cartoonist Berthio gives up for his part The duty to do the same.
“It was a very young newsroom,” remembers Paule Beaugrand-Champagne. “Almost all of us were under 40. It was an atmosphere that you couldn’t find elsewhere. »
François Demers joined the adventure in 1975. Leaving The sun, the young journalist knowingly agrees to reduce his annual income. The game is worth it, he judges. “It’s been a great adventure in many ways. In the political turmoil of the time, it was very interesting. But I knew that it was very risky career-wise, that the newspaper’s finances were very fragile. But it was a risk I had to take at that age,” confides the man who has taught at Laval University since 1980.
Yves Michaud, the director, has a job. And chatter. He handles the pen as if it were a foil. He loves fighting. He trained at Bugle of Saint-Hyacinthe, for a long time the diary of an extraordinary senator, Télesphore-Damien Bouchard, judged guilty of anticlericalism by the clergy. After studying journalism in Strasbourg, Michaud became, in the 1960s, editor-in-chief and director of the popular newspaper The homeland. He will then be elected deputy for Jean Lesage’s Liberal Party, without ever losing sight of the crucial role of the media in democracy.
Media already concentrated
The advent of Day should be seen in a context of unprecedented press concentration. There are serious concerns about media acquisitions and mergers in the hands of a few.
In December 1968, while he was a deputy for the county of Gouin, Yves Michaud obtained the creation of a parliamentary committee to study the consequences of media concentration. He fears the effects of the acquisition by large financial interests of press companies. “The quality of the democratic system is a direct function of the quality and quantity of information received by citizens,” he declares. Michaud points to a series of transactions in the media, which have occurred since the early 1960s, for the benefit of powerful companies.
“In itself, the fact of placing control of the Quebec press under the authority of a single person or a single group is to constitute, alongside the State, an extremely powerful and dangerous parallel power, whatever be the quality, competence, honesty and absence of bias of the people involved,” affirms Michaud. He fears mergers, acquisitions, concentrations. “Will we witness here, in Quebec, the desolate spectacle of the gradual disappearance of small press companies with modest incomes, or their gradual integration into large financial groups where they will quickly lose their soul and their originality? »
The economic interests “which connect the masters of the Quebec press to the colossi of Canadian finance are now too linked, too well known for us not to exercise, in the name of the Quebec community, constant surveillance on the main circuits and the first relays of information and popular culture.
In this white-hot state of mind, demonstrators rush against The Press on October 16, 1971. Bricks were thrown at the building. Fires are lit. A new demonstration took place on October 29 against the same newspaper. More than 15,000 people demonstrate in front of the daily newspaper on rue Saint-Jacques. They denounce its biases. René Lévesque denounces this violence.
Supports and troubles
When The day appeared in 1974, it was immediately endorsed by several key figures in the cultural world, such as Yvon Deschamps, Gilles Vigneault and Félix Leclerc, immortalized with the newspaper before their eyes by Antoine Desilets. Several readers acquired so far Duty then turn their backs on it, convinced of the relevance of the proposals of the new daily life, more in accordance with the social slope on which the independence drive is located.
But government advertisers shun the newspaper. Part of this advertising windfall escapes him, so that The day evolves quickly in a precarious financial situation. Its survival depends on fundraising campaigns with members of the Parti Québécois. And they appear reluctant to give, judging the journalists too independent for separatists.
“Several members felt that we were not supportive enough of the PQ,” summarizes Paule Beaugrand-Champagne. “They would have liked us to be the party newspaper. But it was important for us not to become an organ of propaganda. There was a clear editorial line, but it was obvious from the start that we would practice journalism according to the highest standards of integrity,” underlines the former president of the Quebec Press Council.
For a little over two years, The day will hold on. But he sticks out his tongue quite quickly; liquidity is lacking. And the way of considering information that journalists defend does not agree with that that the Parti Québécois establishment envisages for itself. The newspaper closed at the end of the summer of 1976, while the PQ still belonged to the opposition. The following year, the title was reborn as a weekly. It only lasts for 50 issues only.
The new newspaper intends to get out of this situation by adopting a self-management model. Journalists are grouped together within a society of editors. This principle, modeled on that of the French daily The world, grants journalists strong editorial power. They enjoy powers over the content that appears in the pages of their newspaper. Decisions are in principle taken collectively.
A utopia ?
It is under the marquee of their editorial company that the journalists of the Day voted for the dismissal of four of their colleagues after a first year of existence. The previously good-natured working atmosphere is weighed down. “There were a lot of very good, experienced journalists in the newsroom. But there were also a lot of juniors. And some had trouble keeping up. […] So we had to make this decision, but it was very painful,” recalls journalist Pierre Sormany, who later became director of public affairs programs at Radio-Canada.
The society of editors ends up taking control of the publication, against a management which rather wishes to refocus journalistic practice according to political interests. The day published its very last issue on August 24, 1976. Michaud and Parizeau resigned.
With hindsight, Pierre Sormany today describes the experience of Day of “utopian”. President of the editors’ society, then editorial head of this morning newspaper, Paule Beaugrand-Champagne says that journalists were paid $14,000 per year. Which is still the equivalent of $80,000 in 2024. Executives like her barely earned $1,000 more. Less advantageous working conditions than those in force in other media, but still far from the minimum wage at the time, the equivalent of $4,000 per year. The work week stretched over six days. On Saturday, since the newspaper did not appear on Sunday, everyone had the day off. A certain paradox for a daily whose social-democratic editorial line defended better working conditions for all.