Irving vs. Irving by Jacques Poitras

Author:Jacques Poitras
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Canada

Francophones are one-third of New Brunswick’s population, and were the majority in K.C. Irving’s hometown of Bouctouche; his mills and gas stations knew no linguistic boundaries, and his first tree plantations were in the province’s French-speaking northwest. Yet for decades he and his sons gave no consideration to the French-language newspaper market.

Then, in 1996, after the Telegraph-Journal’s blanket coverage of the Acadian World Congress, some francophones had suggested to Neil Reynolds that he introduce French-language content into the New Brunswick Reader. Instead, André Veniot, who had coordinated the congress project, was called to Saint John one day and asked by Reynolds and J.K. Irving to launch a new weekly, Le Journal, full of in-depth features and arts writing, published in French.

Le Journal was not designed to target a market niche, Veniot says, but as a labour of love. “This was a Neil Reynolds creation that J.K. Irving bought into.” J.K. has remained the most attached of the Irving brothers to the Kent County shore where his father grew up; he still has a summer place there and helped pay for the creation of the Bouctouche Dune ecotourism site. Veniot says the idea of publishing a newspaper for Acadians appealed to him.

Sentiment—even J.K. Irving’s—only went so far, it turned out. The paper was a tough sell. A significant share of francophones in southeastern New Brunswick, around Moncton, are comfortable in English, read the Times-Transcript, and weren’t interested in a new paper. Veniot says Le Journal’s advertising sales staff, based in Saint John, didn’t know the market. And, Veniot says, the “literacy challenges” of many francophones were an obstacle: Le Journal was too highbrow. “I made an incorrect assumption. I thought most people could read that. Unfortunately most people couldn’t. It had to be rethought.” When a small weekly in Kent County, Le Papier, went bankrupt in February 1998, Brunswick News bought it, shut it down, and moved its staff to Le Journal to overhaul the product, now under Jonathan Franklin’s supervision. Veniot was sent back to the Telegraph-Journal as a reporter. “I remember talking to Mr. Irving,” he says, “and he said I had done the best I could under the circumstances.”

This moment, as much as any other, may have signalled the passing of the newspapers to a new generation with new sensibilities. J.K.’s impulse to publish a French paper for the Acadians of his hometown gave way to his son Jim’s focus on the bottom line. Jonathan Franklin relished the opportunity to go after francophone readers. “I was very enthusiastic about that because it was a market segment we were not serving,” he says. “That was the big thinking behind everything in the group. Let’s go after revenue.” To that end, long features and highbrow culture were banished. The focus of the redesigned weekly, renamed L’Étoile, would be light community news from around Moncton and southeast New Brunswick.

L’Étoile went it alone for almost five years, posing no apparent threat to L’Acadie Nouvelle, the independently owned French-language daily newspaper. But in

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