18 July 2011

Lord Atholstan

A man of great vitality and immense energy, he retained active direction of his newspapers until he was well beyond his eightieth year, when he disposed of them.
His education being deficient, he made no pretence of being a writer or editor, and the outstanding factors in his remarkable success as a newspaper publisher were his almost uncanny ability to appreciate and even foresee what the public would regard as important news and his energetic skill, which he reinforced by a willingness to spend money freely for his purposes, in catering for its appetite as he gauged it from time to time.
Since Graham was a strong protectionist and keen imperialist, the political influence of his papers was usually, but not always, exercised on behalf of the Canadian conservative party. Indeed in political circles he was regarded as erratic and undependable and his habit of sending communications to political leaders in a curious cipher of his own invention exposed him to the charge of being an intriguer. But he never wavered in his ardour for the closer consolidation of the British Commonwealth, and it led him to take a leading part in the organization of the Empire Press Union, of the Canadian section of which he was president for many years.
In his later life Graham used his great wealth generously for philanthropic purposes. Among these, he was best known for the maintenance of a free soup-kitchen every winter for the poor of Montreal and the support of hospitals and medical research. He was knighted in 1908 and was raised to the peerage as Baron Atholstan, of Huntingdon, Quebec, and Edinburgh, in 1917; he was the first Canadian journalist to receive this latter honour. He received the honorary degree of Doctor of Law from Glasgow University in 1909. He married in 1892 Annie Beekman, second daughter of Edward Hamilton, of Montreal, and had one daughter. He died at Montreal 28 January 1938.
A portrait of Atholstan by Alphonse Jongers is in the possession of his daughter, the Hon. Mrs. B. M. Hallward, of Montreal.

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