The Spectator celebrates 175 years
The oldest business still operating in Hamilton marks a year-long birthday
The Spectator is now onemonth into our year-long 175 project, the fruits of which — 175 stories about our city’s history.
We are publishing about three or four a week. You can read them in the paper every Saturday or any time on our 175th webpage.
It was a warm summer day almost 175 years ago that 29year-old Robert Smiley published the first Hamilton Spectator, at that time called The Hamilton Spectator and Journal of Commerce.
It wasn’t much to begin with, only four pages and produced semi-weekly, but you could pick one up for a penny. By 1850, it rivalled the circulation of Toronto’s Globe. By 1852, the Spectator was a daily.
It was considered a moderately conservative publication, with the backing of many in the city’s business community, and it turned a profit in its early days. The rest, as they say, is history.
Smiley was wealthy, but he railed against poverty, calling it a “civic disgrace” — a cause still close to the hearts of all of us at The Spectator to this day, work that has won The Spectator national and international recognition in recent years.
Smiley died young, a few hours after returning home from another long day at the office, at the age of 39.
There have been many changes since then, in journalism, in business and across the city and the world, and at the newspaper itself. The Spectator offices have now moved 10 times, and at the beginning of this year the organization left the iconic building at 44 Frid St. overlooking Highway 403. Post-pandemic, staff will move to offices on the east Mountain.
The Spectator, today the city’s oldest business still in operation, has chronicled the growth of the city, the changes in society, the trials and triumphs of its people. It remains, as we remind readers on the front page every day, “committed to our community.”
What newspaper isn’t? Newspapers bring people together, encourage debate, criticize failure, look for solutions and keep populations informed — for informed populations are best able to chart a course to prosperity and a just society.
We are, of course, no longer simply a newspaper. We have a growing website, with many new digital-only subscribers each week. We offer an e-paper and an app. We have photo galleries and videos and audio clips and podcasts and interactive graphics and more online.
Our business is healthy, but our future is not certain. The world is changing quickly, and like many businesses, we are working hard to adapt.
Smiley, though, would be amazed, not only by the monumental changes, but also by our commitment to our original vision: to inform our readers, to shine a light on secrecy, and to make the community better.