Saturday Night (Toronto, Ont.)

The first issue of Saturday Night appeared in Toronto, appropriately enough, on Saturday, 3 December 1887. Published by Edmund E. Sheppard as a weekly, it was purchased, generally by office workers, for reading on Sunday, for at this time Sunday publishing was prohibited. Since then, Saturday Night has changed its publishing schedule many times while becoming a national literary, cultural, and political journal. Many of its editors began as contributors.

Sheppard’s successor was Joseph T. Clark, who was editor from 1906-1909; Charles Frederick Paul was editor from 1909 to 1926. Hector Charlesworth took over as editor in 1926 and was succeeded by B.K. Sandwell, who was editor from 1932 to 1951. In 1951 Robert A. Farquharson succeeded Sandwell and was followed by Jack Kent Cooke, who bought Consolidated Press, of which Saturday Night was a part. It was he who appointed Arnold Edinborough as editor. Edinborough eventually bought the magazine himself and remained until 1968. Robert Fulford was editor from 1968 until 1987.

The magazine was relaunched in 1991 with the October issue as its "premiere issue". In the spring of 2000, Saturday Night became a weekly insert in Hollinger-owned, Southam’s National Post. In the fall of 2000, Southam sold fifty percent of its shares to CanWest Global Communications, which eventually bought out its partner. On 1 Nov. 2001, the magazine was sold by CanWest Global Communications Corp to Multi-Vision Publishing Inc . Under Hollinger and CanWest the magazine was published 48 times a year; Multi-Vision Publishing published six issues a year. In February 2002, St. Joseph Corporation acquired Key Media Ltd., the publisher of major magazines such as Quill & Quire, and the recently acquired Saturday Night magazine. Their Multi-Vision Division continued to publish Saturday Night six times a year. On 20 October 2005 St. Joseph Media announced that it would suspend publication of Saturday Night after the Winter issue, distributed with the National Post on 26 November 2005.

2015-06-11

A. Wilson