The Twillingate Sun

The Voice of Newfoundland’s Northern Outports

In 1880, most newspapers in Newfoundland were printed in St. John’s. For the people of the island’s remote northern outports, news often arrived days or even weeks late. The Twillingate Sun and Northern Weekly Advertiser changed that. As the first newspaper published outside the capital, it became the voice of Newfoundland’s northern fishing communities.

The first edition of The Twillingate Sun and Northern Weekly Advertiser was first published on June 24, 1880 by Jabez .P. Thompson (1852 – 1938) in Twillingate, Newfoundland and Labrador. It was the first newspaper outside of St. John’s and was published every Saturday. The name changed in October 1912 to The Twillingate Sun. Thompson was born and educated in Harbour Grace and briefly worked for the Harbour Grace Standard.

The paper focused on local news along with birth, death and marriage notices, church announcements, shipping news and reports from surrounding communities. He initially ran the paper with a tiny staff of just two people. The newspaper championed local causes, including fundraising for Twillingate’s first hospital, while keeping readers informed about church services, community events and the arrival and departure of fishing and sealing vessels.

Readers also followed the remarkable career of Twillingate-born opera singer Georgina Stirling, known internationally as ‘The Nightingale of the North’. The newspaper reported on her performances before the Italian royal family and later celebrated her return to Newfoundland following the Great Fire of 1892.

While most Canadian newspapers had adopted Linotype and other mechanized typesetting methods by the early twentieth century, The Twillingate Sun continued to be composed by hand until its final issue in 1953, making it one of the last , and by several accounts, the last hand-set newspaper in Canada. After sixteen years as editor and proprietor, Thompson sold the newspaper to George Roberts in 1896. Thompson later became a magistrate in Brigus, where he founded another newspaper, The Vindicator. The Twillingate Sun continued serving Newfoundland's northern communities for more than seventy years before publishing its final issue on January 31, 1953.