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Figuring out which Canadian company is the oldest now that Hudson’s Bay has closed its doors is a complicated feat. Many of the country’s earliest businesses have changed hands several times, been bought by more recently established or American firms and even stopped operating before later restarting.
The Hudson’s Bay Co. was founded in 1670; the businesses now in the running were formed decades later, in the 18th century. Their records tended to be less detailed, further obscuring matters.
Library and Archives Canada, The Canadian Press and other researchers have turned up several contenders for the title that range from household names to lesser-known companies.
Here’s a snapshot of how they stack up.
1752: The Halifax Gazette
John Bushell is credited with starting the Halifax Gazette in March 1752. After his former print shop partner Bartholomew Green died before the publication materialized, Bushell headed from Boston to Halifax to see out Green’s plans, the Nova Scotia Archives website says.
The paper was published under various names until 1867, when it became the Nova Scotia Royal Gazette, a government publication the province used to announce legislation.
1764: Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph
William Brown and Thomas Gilmore moved to Canada from Philadelphia and started printing the Quebec Gazette shortly after, in June 1764.
The paper had about four pages split in two columns to offer side-by-side French and English versions of international news, government ads, book reviews and occasionally, poems.
Newspaper publication was suspended at least twice in its early years. The first time was in response to the 1765 Stamp Act, when British parliament imposed a tax on printed materials in its colonies. The second pause came during a siege by American troops in the late mid-1770s.
While a French version of the Gazette was abandoned in the 1840s, when competition proliferated, the English Gazette merged with the Morning Chronicle in 1874 and then the Daily Telegraph in 1925.
The publication is now called the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph. It publishes weekly and says it remains North America’s oldest newspaper.
1778: The Montreal Gazette
Trailing the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph is another newspaper, the Montreal Gazette.
Its founder was Fleury Mesplet, a Frenchman who learned the trade from his printer father before heading to the U.S. and then Canada, where he published Montreal’s first newspaper, the French-language Gazette du commerce et litteraire.
The publication became a thorn in the government’s side and in 1779, governor Frederick Haldimand had Mesplet jailed for three years, according to a 1992 story from the paper. It wasn’t until August 1785 that he revived the Gazette, this time as a bilingual paper.
After he died in 1794, rivals Louis Roy and Edward Edwards each published a paper under the Gazette name. Only Edwards’ lasted.
The Gazette continues in Montreal but is now owned by newspaper conglomerate Postmedia.
1779: The North West Co.
The North West Co. says on its website that the business started when mostly Highland Scots flocked to Montreal and created a fierce competitor to the fur-trading Hudson’s Bay.
Their rivalry was set aside in 1821 and they merged under the HBC name.
The North West Co. later made a comeback when an investor group, including 415 employees, acquired the northern stores division of HBC in 1987.
Northern stores operate in communities with 7,000 or fewer members and sell food, apparel and housewares and offer money transfer and health services.
The investors who bought the northern stores relaunched the business in the 1990s as The North West Co.
It now operates some stores under the Northern, NorthMart, Giant Tiger, Alaska Commercial Co., Cost-U-Less and RiteWay Food Markets banners.
1780: Baine Johnston Corp.
The St. John’s, N.L., commercial real estate firm had its beginnings in the fishing industry.
The Maritime History Archive run by Memorial University says local lore dates the company back to 1780 but notes there is no evidence to support that founding year.
However, the archive says Lang, Baine and Co. of Greenock, Scotland was involved in the Newfoundland trade by 1806. In 1810, William Johnston was appointed as St. John’s agent for a business called Walter Baine and Co. that was a successor to Patten, Baine and Co.
Because Johnston was the only Newfoundland resident, the archive suspects that may have spurred the name change.
Chris Collingwood, who heads the company now, said in a statement that it started to move into the real estate business during the 1960s and today, operates some Leon’s locations in Newfoundland.
1786: Molson Coors
English immigrant John Molson founded a brewery on the banks of the St. Lawrence River in 1786. While beer was its star product, the company’s website said it also dabbled in the banking and lumber business until the early nineties.
It signed a blockbuster deal in 2005 to merge with Coors, a U.S. competitor founded in 1873 by a brewer’s apprentice who started the company after stowing away on a ship from Germany. The new entity split its headquarters between Denver, Col., and Montreal.
Its collection of brands has grown exponentially ever since and now includes Blue Moon, Miller, Grolsch, Peroni, Rickard’s, Vizzy and Simply Spiked as well as its Molson Canadian lager.
While the company is traded on the New York Stock Exchange, it has a subsidiary listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
1790: Stelco
The Steel Co. of Canada is an amalgamation of five companies that merged. The oldest of them was the Montreal Rolling Mills Co., which was incorporated in 1868, a Library and Archives Canada webpage shows.
Rolling Mills was itself an amalgamation of several companies, one of which was a nail plant said to have been started by John Bigelow in the 1790s.
Stelco was bought by the United States Steel Corp. and changed its name to U.S. Steel Canada in 2007. Then it was sold to Bedrock Industries in 2017 and renamed Stelco.
In 2024, it was acquired by Cleveland-Cliffs Inc., which still owns the company. That company’s website lists its founding year as 1847.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 2, 2026.
Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press
