Snapshots in History: June 9: Remembering Lord Beaverbrook
June 9, 2015 | John P. | Comments (0)
On June 9 and beyond, take a moment to remember Canadian-British media tycoon and politician, William Maxwell “Max” Aitken, otherwise known as Lord Beaverbrook or 1st Baron Beaverbrook. Born in the Greater Toronto Area in Maple, Ontario on May 25, 1879, Max Aitken moved with his family to Newcastle, New Brunswick in 1880. While at school, he started the school newspaper, delivered newspapers and sold newspaper subscriptions in the community, and became the local correspondent for the Saint John Daily Star. He also worked for the Montreal Star and sold life insurance. He gained control of the Royal Securities Corporation , founded the Montreal Engineering Company and the Calgary Power Company Limited (now known as TransAlta Corporation). Aitken became a millionaire at 30 years of age and moved permanently to Great Britain in 1910, becoming friends with fellow New Brunswicker Andrew Bonar Law (the only Canadian to become Prime Minister of Great Britain). Aitken was elected to the British House of Commons in the 1910 general election. Over the years, he gained a strong foothold in the British media landscape, including a controlling interest in the Daily Express and the London Evening Standard.
During the First World War, Aitken also ran the Canadian War Records Office in London, England, and played an important role in ensuring that Canada’s war contribution was being reported in both British and Canadian newspapers. Aitken also employed artists, filmmakers, and photographers to record soldiers’ lives on the Western Front. He resigned as a MP in late 1916 and received his peerage as the 1st Baron Beaverbrook in 1917. In February 1918, Baron Beaverbrook became Minister of Information with responsibility for propaganda in Allied and neutral countries but resigned later in the year, following a dispute with the Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour.
Between the world wars, Beaverbrook greatly expanded the circulation of the Daily Express, bought the London Evening Standard in 1923, gained a controlling stake in the Glasgow Evening Citizen, and launched the Scottish Daily Express in 1928. Beaverbrook’s influence in the media world attracted attention and he used it to attack those with which he disagreed and to support his friends. In the 1930s, his newspapers mirrored the appeasement policy that the Stanley Baldwin/Neville Chamberlain governments in Great Britain adopted towards Nazi Germany. However, during the Second World War, Beaverbrook served under Prime Minister Winston Churchill in several roles as Minister of Aircraft Production, Minister of Supply, and Minister of War Production respectively.
Following the war, Beaverbrook devoted himself to his media empire and to his philanthropic efforts, much of it directed towards the province of New Brunswick, the city of Fredericton, and the University of New Brunswick. The Beaverbrook Art Gallery is one such example.
Baron Beaverbrook died on June 9, 1964 in Surrey, England, at 85 years of age from cancer. Consider the following titles for borrowing from Toronto Public Library collections:
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