National Library News
December 1997
Vol. 29, no. 12

A Happy New Year, is the right happy wish,

Of the honest, devoted, the news boy Smith;

In snow or in frost, in sunshine or rain,

You find little Smith to be always the same.¹

The last-minute business of a nineteenth-century newspaper office on New Year's Eve often included the composition and printing of a broadside known as the "Carrier's Address". Traditionally written in verse by the editor, the Address summarized the historical events of the year, reflected on the passage of time, and requested that the subscriber tip the poor newsboy who would deliver the Address on New Year's Day.

As part of the tradition of the "Carrier's Address", the editor often wrote in the guise of the newsboy or "printer's devil", as he was called in the days when the carrier doubled as printer's apprentice. An Address issued in 1847 by the TorontoBritish Colonist uses this tradition to lament the heavy annual task of versifying:

Rose at five this morning -- restless -- could not sleep -- Thought of the address which, whether a printer's boy be a scholar or not -- poet or historian -- is expected to be delivered onevery New Year's Day, byevery printer's boy to every subscriber...Seven o'clock p.m. At length I am home again -- wearied, tired, dispirited. How little does the lady whose marriage is "set up" for tomorrow think of the trouble I shall have in announcing it to her friends..., or the members of the Masonic Body of the annoying task of correcting the faulty proofs of the gentleman who wrote the article with a long account in Old English about boars' heads...Oh! me miserum. And the address not touched yet...But away with the thought! Franklin never lamented his lot, neither will I. I shall be editor some day!²

These lines provide an entertaining glimpse into the working conditions, hours, duties and aspirations of the printer's apprentice in Toronto in 1847. A Carrier's Address often gives such valuable insights into local opinions and social conditions. And editors seldom passed up the opportunity to comment on political events of the past year in an intensely personal and colourful way. The following verses were offered by Kingston editor E.J. Barker ("Black Jack o' theWhig") on the 1837 rebellion:

Then brave McNab, to end the job,

With loyal volunteers man --

Went westward ho! and laid fu' low

The rebels mad career man.

McKenzie now began to rue,

And thought to save his hide man,

So turn'd his nose -- in woman's clothes,

And reached the Yankee side man.³

Barker's hostility is not too surprising: a gang of extremists had broken into his newspaper office, smashing the windows and destroying the press. Someone had even poisoned the family dog! Two years later, in equally vivid terms, the editor of the Quebec Gazette used the New Year's Address for 1839 to mourn the proposed union of Upper and Lower Canada:

In good sooth, dearest readers, we think that this marriage Was planned in mistake, and must end in miscarriage; While the parties will only agree in one thing, First to shake off the priest -- then get rid of the ring.⁴

Étienne Parent, editor ofLe canadien, expressed similar doubts about the coming year:

Salut! Salut! O l'an mystérieux,

O mil-huit-cent-quarante,

Toi qu'on a vu s'avancer dans les cieux,

Comme une ombre sanglante.⁵

If the Carrier's Address represented a soapbox to the editor and a tip to the newsboy, to the compositor and pressman, it offered a perfect opportunity to display skill in typography and printing. The compositor surrounded the New Year's verses with an elaborate architectural border ingeniously constructed of hundreds of small printer's ornaments. The pressman often employed a variety of colours of ink (including gold, silver, and copper), which required numerous impressions. Sometimes he printed the address on silk, a slippery, delicate substance that is much more difficult to work with than paper.

More inventive editors played with the tradition. Barker of the KingstonWhig fancied himself a playwright, and in 1838 produced a "dramatic sketch" entitled Tartarian Revels, or, The Devils among Themselves, instead of the traditional poem. In 1855 the editor of Montreal'sMoniteur canadien printed a prose address on cheerful yellow paper imagining the events of New Year's Day in 1536, including this lively conversation between two of Jacques Cartier's companions on look-out duty:

"Are the Indians getting scared?"

"Don't talk to me about it, Jehan!

If they felt the devil hot on their heels, wouldn't they be taking off just as fast?"

"When I think that the captain is always afraid of them --! We can easily get rid of those rogues!"

"Well, sure! But that's what the captain thinks!"

"By the way, Joseph, best wishes!"

"What...? Best wishes?"

"Yeah, for the New Year!"

"What do ya know, it's the first day of the year!

It's true, that didn't even cross my mind. My memory is as frozen as my blood is in this damned country!"⁶ [Translation]

The earliest recorded Canadian Carrier's Address was issued on January 1, 1767 by the Quebec Gazette, a newspaper then only two-and-a-half years old. Doubtless William Brown and Thomas Gilmore, the founders of theGazette, brought the tradition with them from Philadelphia, the town in which they had learned the printing trade. For no New England newspaper of that time was without its annual Address.

The National Library of Canada's Rare Book Division holds 30 Addresses issued by the Quebec Gazette between 1818 and 1864, in addition to dozens of Addresses printed by other newspapers in Quebec and Ontario. The earliest Address is dated 1811, the latest 1915. A list of Addresses is available, and all can be viewed upon request in the Special Collections Reading Room. To welcome 1998, many of the most interesting and beautiful Addresses will be on view over the holiday season in the Special Collections Exhibition Room at the National Library of Canada from December 15 to January 31, 1998, between 9:00 a.m. and 10:30 p.m.

¹The Carrier Buy's [sic]Address to the Patrons of the Rural Economist. [Markham, 1864 or 1865].

²Extract from the Diary of the Carrier-Boy of the British Colonist: Toronto, January 1st, 1847. [Toronto, 1846].

³Tartarian Revels, or, The Devils among Themselves: A New Year's Dramatic Sketch for 1838, Gratefully Inscribed to the Patrons of the British Whig, by Their Obedient & Obliged Servant, Black Jack: Kingston, January 1st, 1838. [Kingston, 1837].

⁴The Québec Gazette: Verses, Addressed by the Boys Who Deliver the Québec Gazette, to Their Patrons: 1st January, 1840. [Quebec, 1839].

⁵Hommage du petit gazettier, à messieurs les abonnés du Canadien : le premier jour l'année 1840. [Québec, 1839].

⁶1er janvier 1855, cadeau du Moniteur canadien : Jacques Cartier, ou, Le 1er jour de l'An 1536 en Canada. [Montréal, 1854].