Conrad Black biography

Synopsis

Profile

After growing up in Toronto, Black studied history and political science at Carleton University in Ottawa (B.A., 1965), earned a law degree from Laval University in Quebec city (1970), and studied history at McGill University in Montreal (M.A., 1973). For his history thesis he wrote a biography of former Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis; published in 1977, it came to be considered a definitive work.

Black entered the newspaper industry in 1967 as part owner of two small Quebec weeklies; he continued to acquire smaller Canadian papers, cofounded the Sterling Newspapers Group (1971), and by 1972 owned 21 local papers across Canada. In 1978 Black assumed control of Argus Corp., an investment holding corporation in which his father was a major shareholder. At the time, Argus held controlling interests in several Canadian corporations, including Hollinger Mines, Dominion Stores (a grocery chain), Standard Broadcasting, and Massey Ferguson (a farm equipment company). Wishing to reposition the firm in the newspaper business, Black transformed Argus into an operating company by divesting shares of Massey Ferguson and dismantling Dominion Stores. Hollinger Mines then became the principal shareholder of Argus, and the name of the corporation was changed in 1986 to Hollinger Inc. A dispute arose in 1986 when Hollinger withdrew more than $60 million (Canadian) in surplus from the Dominion Stores pension fund. Although the transaction had been approved by the Pension Commission of Ontario, Hollinger eventually settled by sharing the surplus with the Dominion Stores employees.

Black received the Order of Canada in 1990 and became a member of the Privy Council of Canada in 1992. By the mid-1990s he had built Hollinger into the third largest newspaper group in the world and controlled nearly 250 newspapers worldwide, including the London Daily Telegraph (acquired controlling interest in 1985), the Fairfax Group in Australia (1985), The Jerusalem Post (acquired 1989), Southam Press in Canada (1996), the Chicago Sun-Times (1996), and roughly 100 smaller newspapers in the United States.

By tradition, the owner of the Telegraph is entitled to a peerage, but, when the British government proposed honouring Black, a Canadian citizen, with a baronetcy in 1999, the Canadian government blocked it, citing the Nickel Resolution (1919), a somewhat inconsistently enforced rule preventing Canadian citizens from receiving such honours. Some speculated that