Colonel John Bayne Maclean

Class of 1998

Colonel John Bayne Maclean, was the founder, president and chairman of the Maclean-Hunter Publishing Corporation. Born in Guelph, Ontario, he attended Queen’s University and got his start as a $7.00 a week cub reporter for the Toronto Mail. He received a promotion from reporter to editor when he was 25 years old.

Throughout this time, he invested his savings in the stock market and was soon able to publish his own magazine, The Canadian Grocer. He built his business slowly by re-investing the profits in publications, machinery and buildings. He started the Canadian Press clipping service in 1902, published the first issue of Macleans Magazine in 1905, and the first issue of the Financial Post in 1907. By 1927, Maclean had set up a commercial printing department and entered the US marketplace.

Through the Great Depression, Maclean was able to claim that he had not had to lay off anyone. At his death in 1950, his company was helping to define Canada’s vision of itself through the 34 different periodical titles it published and through the writers and editors who contributed to it.