OFFICE BOY TO PEER.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 7920, 18 August 1917, Page 2 (Supplement)

OFFICE BOY TO PEER.

Sir Hugh Graham, who has recently been raised to the peerage, started life as an office boy. Jlis parents were Scots who emigrated to Canada and settled in Huntingdon in the Province of Quebec. When Sir Hugh was fifteen he left school and went as an office bay on the Montreal Evening Telegraph. Before ten months had passed he was made business manager. Three years went by before he met the man who was to help him build the foundation of his career. That man was 'Lanigan, a brilliant journalist on the Montreal Gazette. Sir Hugh, who was plain Mr. Graham then, had a splendid news instinct and immense organising capacity. Lanigan had a genius for writing. They only had twenty pounds between them, but they founded the Star which started as a one-sheet paper, but finally grew to a journal of twenty-four pages. The paper was first printed in 1 869. Sir Hugh devoted his life to the Star and made it what it is to-dav, one of the most influential newspapers in Canada. He popularised it by devoting space not only to matters of local interest, but to affairs affecting - the Empire as a whole.

During the South African War lie did a great deal towards hastening the dispatch of the Canadian Contingent Africa. In order that the families of the volunteers mignt not suffer, he insured the life of every man who enlisted as a soldier.