Western Clarion
2 January 1922 cover
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| Type | Weekly |
|---|---|
| Founder(s) | Richard Parmater Pettipiece |
| Founded | 1903 |
| Political alignment | Socialist |
| Language | English |
| Ceased publication | 1925 |
| Headquarters | Vancouver |
| Country | Canada |
| ISSN | 1709-7568 |
| OCLC number | 53905043 |
The Western Clarion was a newspaper launched in January 1903 that became the official organ of the Socialist Party of Canada (SPC). At one time it was the leading left-wing newspaper in Canada. It lost influence after 1910–11 when various groups broke away from the SPC. The editors were unsympathetic to women's demands for the vote and the right to work for pay. During World War I (1914–14) the Western Clarion was internationalist and denounced a war in which workers fought while others profited. Following the Russian Revolution it adopted a pro-Bolshevik stance, The paper was banned in 1918, but allowed to resume publication in 1920. Its circulation dwindled as SPC membership dwindled, and the last issue appeared in 1925.
In 1902 Richard Parmater Pettipiece, who had been publishing the Lardeau Eagle, a miners' journal that supported the Socialist League, bought an interest in George Weston Wrigley's Citizen and Country. Starting in July 1902 the journal began appearing in Vancouver with Wrigley's help as the Canadian Socialist. The newspaper was aligned with the Canadian Socialist League. In October 1902 Pettipiece renamed the paper the Western Socialist. The paper merged with the Clarion of Nanaimo and the Strike Bulletin of the United Brotherhood of Railway Employees (UBRE) and appeared as the Western Clarion on 8 May 1903. The paper was named after the Clarion published by Robert Blatchford in England.
The Western Clarion had a guaranteed circulation of 6,000 three days a week. Although privately owned the paper expressed the views of the Socialist Party of British Columbia, but gave coverage to controversies among Canadian socialist groups. The provincial executive of the SPBC controlled the Western Clarion by late 1903, and appointed E. T. Kingsley (1856–1929) editor. The newspaper became one of the most prominent left wing publications in Canada before World War I (1914–18).
In 1905 Kingsley was one of the founders of the Socialist Party of Canada (SPC). The Western Clarion became the SPC organ. According to Alex Paterson, when the SPC was in its prime Kingsley, "pretty well ran the Western Clarion and the Party." He was editor until 1908, and continue to finance the newspaper until 1912, going deeply into debt as a result. Donald Gorden McKenzie (1887–1963) was editor from 1908 to 1911. The SPC saw itself as the preeminent socialist party in the world. McKenzie said, only partly in jest, "since Marx died nobody was capable of throwing light on [economic] matters except the editor of the Clarion, whoever we may happen to be."
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