Roy Thomson

Roy Herbert Thomson was born in Toronto in 1894, the son of a barber. His date of birth is recorded as either June 5 or July 6.⁠[1][1][2][3]

He left school at 14 to become a bookkeeper, worked his way through business college, and later rose to branch manager of a cordage company. During the First World War he was unable to join the army because of poor eyesight; he had worn thick glasses since childhood. After the war he briefly tried farming, and in 1920 he returned to Ontario to start an automotive parts distributorship, which was unsuccessful.⁠[4][5][5][4]

In 1930, Thomson obtained a franchise to sell radios in North Bay, a remote small town in Northern Ontario. There was no local radio station, and only weak signals from high-powered U.S. stations could be received on some nights, so radios were hard to sell.⁠[6][4][5]

To boost radio sales, Thomson decided to start his own station: he rented an unused broadcasting licence from the Abitibi Paper Company for $1 a year and bought an old transmitter from the National Carbon Co. for $200 plus several promissory notes. CFCH North Bay went on the air in March 1931 (other accounts give 1932). Once the station was on the air, both his radio sales business and the station began to make money.⁠[5][5][5][4][5]

He then turned his attention to gold-mining towns less affected by the Great Depression: he launched CKGB in Timmins in 1932 and CJKL in Kirkland Lake in 1933.⁠[5]

In 1934, Thomson paid $2,600 for the Timmins Press, a weekly located in the same building as CKGB; it was his first newspaper. The paper moved first to twice a week and became a daily in 1935. Because broadcasting licences were becoming increasingly hard to obtain in Canada at the time, while newspapers did not require government licences, he subsequently shifted his focus to newspapers.⁠[6][5][5][5]

In 1940, Thomson went into partnership with Jack Kent Cooke, who managed the radio business while Thomson concentrated on newspapers; the partnership ended in 1949. He also partnered with newspaperman Rupert Davies to launch CHEX in Peterborough in 1942 and CKWS in Kingston in 1943, with Davies owning 51% and Thomson owning 49% and handling management. By 1944 he owned five newspapers and eight radio stations.⁠[4][5][4]

In 1952, Thomson bought the St. Petersburg Independent in Florida, his first newspaper outside Canada; he already owned 12 newspapers at the time.⁠[6][4]

In 1953, Thomson moved to Britain, leaving his North American operations to his 30-year-old son, Kenneth Thomson. His first acquisition in Britain was The Scotsman, a Scottish daily founded in 1817 that was in financial difficulty (other accounts give 1952 as the year of acquisition).⁠[4][4][6][2]

In 1957, helped by his ownership of Scotland’s leading newspaper, Thomson successfully won the commercial television franchise covering central Scotland, and with it ownership of Scottish Television (STV). He described the franchise as “a licence to print money,” a phrase that became widely known as a result.⁠[4][2][5]

In 1959, using the substantial profits of Scottish Television, Thomson bought London’s leading Sunday paper, The Sunday Times, along with 17 other local newspapers, from the Kemsley family. The deal was structured as a “reverse takeover”: Kemsley Newspapers acquired Thomson’s STV company in exchange for its own shares, giving Thomson majority control of the group.⁠[4][4][4][3]

In 1961, Thomson established Thomson Publications to publish books and magazines, beginning with the acquisition of the Illustrated London News Company, which owned The Illustrated London News, The Tatler, and the publisher Michael Joseph; in the first half of the 1960s it went on to acquire publishers including Thomas Nelson & Sons and Hamish Hamilton, and started the Sunday Times color magazine.⁠[4][4][4][4][4]

The New Year Honours list published on January 1, 1964, announced the Queen’s intention to confer a barony of the United Kingdom “for public services” on Roy Herbert Thomson, then chairman of The Thomson Organisation, Ltd. (the list appeared in a Gazette supplement dated December 31, 1963). On March 10, 1964, the Queen formally conferred the barony by letters patent, with the title “Baron Thomson of Fleet, of Northbridge in the City of Edinburgh.”⁠[7][7][8][8]

He took British citizenship, signaling that Britain had replaced Canada as the base of his business, and held a seat in the House of Lords until his death; he first spoke in the House of Lords on November 5, 1964, and had 13 recorded contributions through 1972.⁠[4][9][9][9]

In 1965, as foreign travel was just beginning to become popular in Britain, Thomson bought three package tour companies and the small airline Britannia Airways to form Thomson Travel. The same year, Thomson Newspapers Ltd. in Canada went public.⁠[4][4][6]

Thomson had long wanted a national daily to pair with The Sunday Times. In 1966, he agreed to buy The Times and its two associated weeklies, the Times Literary Supplement and the Times Educational Supplement, from the Astor family. After a Monopolies Commission review, Douglas Jay, President of the Board of Trade, announced in the House of Commons on December 21, 1966, that he accepted the commission’s conclusion that the transfer would not operate against the public interest and had consented to it; Thomson had given the commission a personal assurance about preserving the separate identities of the two papers and the independence of their editors, which The Thomson Organisation subsequently confirmed in writing. The deal was completed in 1967.⁠[4][10][10][6]

He described the acquisition as the summit of a lifetime’s work and continued to bear the paper’s losses; by the time of his death he had put at least £10 million into The Times, expanding its editorial staff, adding a business supplement, and promoting it.⁠[4][4][4]

In 1970, Thomson was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE).⁠[2]

In 1971, the Thomson group joined Occidental Petroleum, Getty Oil, and Allied Chemical as the sole U.K. partner in a consortium bidding for North Sea oil exploration licenses, with a 20% stake. The consortium made its first strike in 1973 in the Piper field, with reserves of more than 800 million barrels, and found about 400 million barrels more in the Claymore field in 1974. Thomson rejected the U.S. partners’ offer to buy his stake, and North Sea oil later became the group’s main source of profit.⁠[4][4][4][4][4]

In 1975, Thomson published his memoir, After I Was Sixty.⁠[1]

Thomson died in London on August 4, 1976. By then his business had grown into a large privately owned communications conglomerate called The Thomson Organisation; his newspaper holdings eventually came to include more than 200 newspapers in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, along with television and other diversified interests. His son Kenneth Thomson inherited his title and succeeded him as chairman.⁠[1][9][4][2][2][3]

Thomson was known for his frugality and strict cost control. He cared little for the tradition and prestige of newspapers and ran them as tightly as his magazine, travel agency, and television businesses; in Canada, he favored acquiring small newspapers that faced no competition and did not seek prestige. Even after being made a baron, he continued to commute to his office on the London Underground.⁠[1][1][2]

He publicly pledged that the editorial support of his newspapers was not for sale to anyone, that headquarters would not direct the papers’ policies, and that their editors would be free and independent.⁠[4]

Thomson’s descendants hold the family’s assets through the private company Woodbridge. Woodbridge is the primary investment vehicle for members of the family of the late Roy H. Thomson and, as of March 2026, held approximately 70% of Thomson Reuters’ common shares; as of 2025, it invested on behalf of seven families descended from Roy Thomson, and Thomson Reuters chairman David Thomson is his grandson.⁠[11][11][12][12]