The Thomson Empire

Dean Tudor is a journalism professor at the Ryerson Polytechnical
Institute and founding editor of the CBRA.

This is a corporate history book, written in a dense, almost turgid style but packed with data (although much of it is not attributed by footnotes or bibliography). Topics include the beginnings of the “empire,” the personalities of Roy Thomson and his son Ken (at one point she says “Kenneth is capable both of great sentiment and thoughtfulness, as well as insensitivity”; she gives examples of the former but says nothing further about the latter), and information about their middle managers who run the empire. All of the products are discussed, primarily in separate chapters: books (since sold to Penguin in 1985), travel, newspapers, oil, department stores, magazines (but not much detail here), and computer data services. The latter has been touted as the future of Thomson, and indeed it is: the organization has made many recent acquisitions in this area, such as buying the University of Toronto Library Automation Services in 1985.

Overall, there is very little about Canada here, except for the Globe and Mail and for such troublesome areas as The Bay department stores and the Kent Commission on Newspapers. There is nothing about Fleet Bookstores and little on Fleet Publications (the latter is dismissed in one short paragraph, and inaccurately at that). There is also very little about South Africa and Australia. There is, however, much about the United Kingdom and the United States parts of the empire.