The editors and publishers who picked up the challenge of Amor De Cosmos were a glorious lot. They were devoted to their craft, and worked tirelessly to ensure that their newspapers covered the news. They also tried to push the people in power if they felt it was needed -- and several of them became active in politics.
Kenneth Drury
Times editor
1936-1944
Kenneth Charles Drury was born in Victoria in 1893, and attended the Columbia School of Journalism as well as the Toronto Conservatory of Music.
The lure of a newspaper career was stronger than the pull of music, however, and Drury returned to Victoria to work for the Daily Times.
After a brief stint with the army in the First World War, Drury came back to the newspaper and rose up the ladder. He became editor in 1936 with the death of Benjamin Nicholas.
In 1944, Drury was named editor of the Vancouver News Herald. He later became a senior executive at the Vancouver Sun before retiring in 1956. He returned to Victoria and spent the last 15 years of his life here. He died in 1971.
Charles Swayne
Colonist editor
1917-1943
Charles Robert Crawford Swayne was editor in chief of the Daily Colonist for more than 25 years, an accomplishment without parallel in Victoria.
Swayne was born in Ireland in 1880, and started working for the London Daily Mail when he was just 18 years old. He came to Victoria in 1906, working for the Times for three years before moving to the Colonist.
Swayne became editor in 1917, with the death of Charles Lugrin. He stayed on the job until his own death in 1943.
Swayne had a keen interest in literature, and was responsible for an increase in the Colonist's coverage of the fine arts. He was also considered to be one of the best tennis players in town.
Archie Wills
Times managing editor 1936-1951
Archie Wills was managing editor of the Victoria Daily Times from 1936 to 1951, and is remembered as the man who tried to brighten our lives with all that talk about a sea serpent in Cadboro Bay.
He did much more than that, of course. He covered many of the most important news events in the first half of the 20th century, and his service to the public extended beyond his work at the newspaper.
Wills served on a wide variety of boards and committees, and was an alderman in Victoria for 10 years. He was instrumental in the establishment of parking lots in downtown Victoria. He died in 1988.
Brian Tobin
Times editor
1963-1974
Brian Tobin, the editor of the Victoria Daily Times for 11 years, is remembered as a stickler for accuracy and precision.
Born in Victoria in 1909, Tobin tried a variety of jobs before settling into journalism, first with the British United Press (precursor to United Press International) and eventually with the Times.
Tobin crossed the Atlantic five times during the Second World War, including a trip as one of three journalists chosen to fly to London via bomber with Prime Minister Mackenzie King.
Tobin (no relation to the premier of Newfoundland) was the pen behind the popular front-page personage Ol' Vic, whose homespun sayings were long considered a must-read. He died in 2003.
John Robson
Colonist editor
1860s
John Robson was born in Perth, Upper Canada, and came west because of the Fraser gold rush. He went to New Westminster, where he helped found the British Columbian newspaper in 1861.
Robson was elected to the legislature in 1866, and in 1869 moved his paper to Victoria, then sold it and started working for the Colonist.
He is the man responsible for one of the quirks of Victoria newspapers. He believed people should not work on Sundays, and since that is when a Monday morning paper would be produced, there was no Monday Colonist. The Mondays-off policy continued until the 1980s, when the Times Colonist became B.C.'s only seven-day-a-week paper.
Robson was elected to the provincial legislature to represent Nanaimo in 1871, and retired from politics in 1875 to take a position with the Canadian Pacific Railway. In 1879 he was back in New Westminster, where he bought another paper and renamed it after his old British Columbian.
He was soon re-elected to the legislature, and was provincial secretary, minister of mines and minister of finance and agriculture. In 1889 he became premier. He died in office three years later.
David Higgins
Colonist publisher
1860s, 1870s, 1880s
David Higgins was born in Halifax in 1834, went to San Francisco in 1856 and founded the San Francisco Morning Call, but sold it after two years and came to Victoria. He then went to the Fraser River in search of gold but was unsuccessful.
Higgins then came to work for Amor De Cosmos as, he said later, "editor, reporter and all-round businessman, rolled into one for the sake of economy." They soon had a disagreement, so Higgins bought a press from the defunct Victoria Gazette and set up the Victoria Daily Chronicle.
After a few years, De Cosmos sold his newspaper to his staff, and Higgins merged the Chronicle into the Colonist. The newspaper carried both names for six years before becoming just the Colonist again.
In 1886 he quit the Colonist, and was elected to the provincial legislature. He was speaker from 1890 to 1900. For a short time, Higgins was editor of the Vancouver World. After retiring he wrote two books, The Mystic Spring and The Passing of a Race, valuable sources for early history of the island: They are fiction, but based on fact.
He died in 1917.
Charles Lugrin
Colonist editor
1897-1902, 1906-1917
Charles Henry Lugrin started out as a lawyer and was called to the bar in New Brunswick at the age of 24.
Lugrin later gave up law to devote his time to journalism. He was editor of the Saint John Telegraph before moving to Fredericton where he took the reins of two daily papers.
In 1891 Lugrin moved to Seattle, where he was admitted to the bar, then became editor at the Press-Times.
In 1897, Lugrin moved to Victoria to became editor of the Colonist. Lugrin's boss at the Colonist was James Dunsmuir, who was also premier of British Columbia at the time. Not surprisingly, that combination caused problems for Lugrin, who wanted to call things as he saw them, free of Dunsmuir's spin. As a result, Lugrin's career at the Colonist lasted five years before he resigned on a point of principle and went back to practising law.
But when John S.H. (Sam) Matson bought the Colonist in 1906, Lugrin was eager to return as editor. He stayed in the job until his death in 1917. He led the drive for the incorporation of Esquimalt, and served as its first reeve in 1912.
J.S.H. (Sam) Matson
Colonist publisher
1906-1931
John S.H. (Sam) Matson came to Victoria from Ontario in 1889, and sold real estate and life insurance until 1906, when he bought the Daily Colonist from the Dunsmuir estate.
Matson tried to set up a chain of newspapers, and became publisher of the Colonist, the Evening Post, the Vancouver News Advertiser and the Nanaimo Herald.
His papers were decidedly not Liberal: He reviled William Lyon Mackenzie King, and would not allow anything positive to be said about him.
Matson envisioned Victoria becoming a movie centre to rival Hollywood, and was one of the people responsible for building the Royal Theatre, which was opened in 1913.
He also established Vancouver Island Coach Lines, as well as ferry service to the Gulf Islands.
Matson owned the paper until his death in 1931.
His sons Jack and Tim operated the Colonist until 1950 when the Matson family sold it to Calgary businessman Max Bell, who merged many functions of the Colonist with those of the Times.
William Templeman
Times publisher
1885-1914
William Templeman (known as "Big Bill") was born in Ontario in 1844, and founded the Almonte Gazette there in 1867.
He sold the Gazette in 1884 and spent six months travelling before settling in Victoria, where he started working in the mechanical department of the Daily Times.
Before long he became a partner, and then took full ownership. He owned the newspaper for three decades.
He was appointed a senator in 1887 and in 1902 was named minister without portfolio in Sir Wilfrid Laurier's cabinet. In 1906 he became minister of internal revenue.
He invested heavily in his newspaper. In 1893 he installed the best typesetting equipment available in Canada. In 1900 he set up the first photo-engraving plant in B.C., and 10 years later built the new Times building at Fort and Broad streets.
When Templeman died in 1914 everyone who had worked with him for at least one year was willed one month's salary.
Benjamin Nicholas
Times editor
1917-1936
Benjamin Charles Nicholas served as editor of the Victoria Daily Times for 19 years -- literally up to the moment of his death. On May 19, 1936, "Benny" Nicholas suffered a heart attack at his desk and was found dead in his office at the Times.
Nicholas, born in 1879 in Virginia City, Nev., came to Victoria at the age of six with his family. He worked briefly at the Colonist, then joined the Times as a reporter in 1900.
When the paper's owner, William Templeman, became revenue minister in Sir Wilfrid Laurier's Liberal government six years later, he took Nicholas to Ottawa with him as his private secretary.
He returned to Victoria with Templeman in 1912 and became an editorial writer at the Times. Five years later he was named the paper's editor.
After years at the Times, he decided to run in the next federal election. It was expected he would get a cabinet position because his vast knowledge of B.C. issues. But before the election, he died at his desk at the Times, in the middle of editing stories for that day's newspaper.
Bruce Hutchison
Times editor
1950-1963
Perhaps the most renowned editor of a Victoria newspaper, Bruce Hutchison began his 75-year career in journalism when he went to work as sports reporter for the Daily Times in 1918 at the age of 16.
A native of Prescott, Ont., who moved to Victoria with his family as an infant, Hutchison gained national fame as the author of 15 books including The Unknown Country, his portrait of Canada that won the Governor General's award for non-fiction in 1943.
He also cultivated extensive contacts among politicians in Ottawa and Washington and for many years reported authoritatively from both capitals.
Hutchison served as editor of the Times from 1951 to 1963, and then became editorial director of the Vancouver Sun until 1979. However, he refused to leave Vancouver Island and directed the Sun's editorial pages from his home in Saanich and a cottage on Shawnigan Lake.
Hutchison continued to write a weekly column for the Sun almost until his death in 1992 at the age of 91.
He received many honours, including the Order of Canada and a National Newspaper Award for editorial writing, and became legendary as the dean of Canadian journalism. Near the end of his life he gave this advice to young journalists: "Learn to spell the names right and be sure not to break any confidence."
Stuart Keate
Times publisher
1950-1964
The 1950s was a time when the Daily Times acquired a national reputation under the editorship of Bruce Hutchison -- and publisher Stu Keate gave the paper a major role as a community leader.
Among other things, he championed the cause of erecting the world's tallest totem pole in Beacon Hill Park and proudly presided over the ceremony at which Chief Mungo Martin's work was unveiled in 1956.
Keate had a strong record in journalism when owner Max Bell asked him to become publisher of the Times in 1950.
Born in Vancouver in 1913, he started out as a sports reporter for The Province after graduating from the University of British Columbia, and worked for Time and Life magazines in New York. He was bureau chief of Time in Montreal before returning to Victoria to head the Times.
Keate was involved in many community organizations, serving as president of the Chamber of Commerce and playing a major role in the transformation of Victoria College into the University of Victoria.
Under his leadership the Times promoted such flashy stunts as the first swims across Juan de Fuca Strait. It was a time when the Times and the Colonist competed fiercely for readers, even sponsoring rival swims across the strait.
Keate went on to serve as publisher of the Vancouver Sun from 1964 to 1979, and became a director of FP Publications Ltd. He died in 1987.
Henry Lawson
Colonist editor
1888-1897
Henry Lawson served as editor of the Colonist for eight years, until his death in 1897.
Lawson left school at an early age and was largely self-educated.
After working as a teacher and school principal, he turned to journalism, and spent 40 years in the field, starting in Prince Edward Island.
He worked as editor of the Summerside Progress, then the Charlottetown Patriot. After he bought the Patriot he made himself its Ottawa correspondent when Parliament was in session.
After he sold his newspaper he worked for several others across Canada. he was offered the editor's job at the Colonist in the fall of 1888.
Lawson's daughter Maria continued to work at the Colonist after he died. She retired from the paper in 1934 at the age of 82.
Herbert Sandham Graves
Colonist editor
1951-1960
Herbert Sandham Graves was editor of the Daily Colonist for 17 years.
He first joined the newspaper staff in 1919, after returning from fighting in the First World War in France, Belgium and Palestine.
In 1921, Graves went to the Victoria Times, and in 1929 was assigned the legislature beat. In 1931 he returned to the Colonist as legislature reporter, and remained in that position until 1942.
He then became editor, serving until 1960. During the Second World War, Graves wrote Lost Diary, an eyewitness account of the First World War.
He died in 1972.