The Canadian Press celebrates 75th anniversary of its French services

MONTREAL – The Canadian Press is celebrating the 75th anniversary of its French-language service, which sent out its first dispatches on Sept. 30, 1951. 

Until then, The Canadian Press, founded in 1917, had been sending English-language dispatches to French-language newspapers, which then translated them.

By launching a French-language service, The Canadian Press became the world’s first bilingual news agency.

In the early years, The Canadian Press’s French service was mostly a writing and translation service, with very little on-the-ground reporting except on Parliament Hill in Ottawa and in Quebec City, where it had its own correspondents. 

Established as a cooperative, the PC — as it is often referred to in the news industry — produced 30,000 words a day for the nine newspapers in Quebec and Le Droit in Ottawa. 

In 1954, the Évangéline, based in Moncton, N.B., became the 11th member to join the cooperative, and the Action catholique in Quebec City joined two years later.

Over the years, The Canadian Press’s French service established itself as a true national news organization with its own field reporters and correspondents. News dispatches, originally transmitted by telegraph, were then sent via teletype, increasing the transmission speed from 66 words per minute to 300. 

When The Canadian Press switched to satellites, its transmission speed rose to 19,200 words per minute. Computerization and the advent of the internet in the late 1990s eliminated transmission limitations.

Canadian Prime Minister Louis St-Laurent flips the switch to turn on the teletype machine, officially inaugurating the French-language service of The Canadian Press. From left to right: Mr. St-Laurent, Roy H. Thomson, president of the Canadian Press, and Hervé Major, president of La Presse Canadienne. This launch on October 3, 1952—one year after the inauguration—confirmed the permanent establishment of the French Service.LA PRESSE CANADIENNE.

The company ultimately abandoned the cooperative model and became a private corporation owned equally by the daily newspaper La Presse, The Globe and Mail and Torstar.

Over the course of its 75-year history, the PC’s staff has distinguished itself in its coverage of major events, including numerous federal and provincial elections, referendums, and countless landmark moments in Quebec, Canada, or abroad.

The Canadian Press, with its reporters in the field and journalists assigned to various news desks, has always distinguished itself by its speed in responding to events without sacrificing the accuracy of the information.

Among these historic moments, The Canadian Press’s French service provided comprehensive coverage, notably during: the October Crisis (1970), the Montreal Olympics (1976), the shooting of Corporal Denis Lortie at the National Assembly (1984), the Montreal flood (1987), the death of René Lévesque (1987), the Polytechnique tragedy (1989), the Oka Crisis (1990), the Canadiens’ last Stanley Cup victory (1993), the Saguenay flood (1996), the Éboulements tragedy (1997), the ice storm (1998), the Maple Spring (2012), the Lac-Mégantic train derailment (2013), the attack on the Grand Mosque of Quebec City (2017), the pandemic (2020–2022), the attack on a daycare centre in Laval (2023), and the truck-ramming attack in Amqui (2023). 

The PC also sent journalists to cover the Olympic Games around the world, stationed correspondents in Afghanistan when Canada had troops there, and provided its members and subscribers with coverage of the extraordinary funerals of Maurice Richard, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and Guy Lafleur, held in Montreal. 

These examples of the French service’s coverage are just a tiny sample of the agency’s work that enables all French-language media outlets that are members or subscribers to its services to inform their audiences about events taking place outside their own coverage areas.

All major French-language media outlets employ journalists who once worked at The Canadian Press, which also boasted a few famous writers in the very early days of its French Service. These include the poets Alfred DesRochers and Olivier Marchand, the essayist Jean Lemoyne, the columnist Guy Fournier, comedian and screenwriter Carl Dubuc, and journalist Michel Roy, who would eventually hold executive positions at Le Devoir and La Presse. 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 15, 2026.