Conrad Moffat Black / b. 1944 / Montreal, Quebec, Canada / Businessman, Newspaper Publisher, Author, Owner of Argus Corporation, Ravelston Corporation, and Hollinger International, among others
Argus Corporation
Bud [McDougald] was a true Darwinist, so in his view, when he died—to the winner should go the spoils. It was a free-for-all. A lot of people, Nelson Davis for one, used to ask me what Bud would have thought of the somewhat unseemly scramble that went on after he died. I suspect it would have flattered him. Had he wanted an orderly succession, he would have organized one. He certainly told Monte and me that he wanted us to take over—but he told a few other people the same thing. Bud was very skillful at presenting the carrot and making sure it wasn’t within anyone’s grasp.
Statement, 1978; reported by Peter C. Newman in The Establishment Man: A Portrait of Power (1982).
Black on Black
I tended, even from my early years, to look at the world from a slightly different vantage point. Although I might have had trouble articulating it at the age of 10, I wasn’t unduly convinced of the durability of the Anglo-Saxon world as we had come to know it in the postwar period, a world of latter-day materialism advancing around the globe on the wings of the English language and the American dollar. I had a sneaking suspicion that we were living in a bit of a fool’s paradise.
Interview with Peter C. Newman, reported in The Establishment Man: A Portrait of Power (1982).
All those who, by their docility or obsequiousness, legitimized the excesses of the school’s penal system, the several sadists and few aggressively fondling homosexuals on the faculty, and the more numerous swaggering boobies who had obviously failed in the real world and retreated to Lilliput where they could maintain their exalted status by constant threat of battery: all gradually produced in me a profound revulsion.
Conrad Black, A Life In Progress (1993).
I have always felt it was the compulsive element in Napoleon that drew him into greater and greater undertakings, until he was bound to fail.
Interview with Peter C. Newman, reported in The Establishment Man: A Portrait of Power (1982).
Re: The reviewer of one of Black’s books:
I had never heard of [Walter] Young before, and I do not expect to hear from him again.
Interview with Peter C. Newman, reported in The Establishment Man: A Portrait of Power (1982).
Perhaps [Montreal] Archbishop Paul-Émile Léger suffered from what they call in French a taste for the sensational. He was like one of those matadors who, as the cadence of the olé’s gets more and more rapid, are always trying to find something more daring to do. He grew hasty in his desire to produce new spectacles and maybe did a few ill-considered things. But on the whole I remain impressed with him.
Interview with Peter C. Newman, reported in The Establishment Man: A Portrait of Power (1982).
All those pent-up forces of envy and disbelief finally showed their true colours instead of masquerading in the deceitful fashion they have used since I took over at Argus. . . . There is something about the Canadian mentality that cannot stand an unbroken string of successes, unless it comes after a long life or after evident ordeal. No one begrudged Terry Fox getting the Order of Canada and no one boos any more when E.P. Taylor wins the Queen’s Plate. But present Canadians with too much success too soon and it’s just unbearable. That’s how it works in this country.
Interview with Peter C. Newman, reported in The Establishment Man: A Portrait of Power (1982).
I’m reasonably upwardly mobile, but I’m not the ravening megalomaniac you read in the press.
Statement, 1978; reported by Peter C. Newman in The Establishment Man: A Portrait of Power (1982).
I am amazed by the number of so-called financial experts who are luxuriating in the view that I am some sort of punch-drunk prizefighter on the ropes. Well, screw them.
Interview with Canadian Business magazine, July, 1981; reported by Peter C. Newman in The Establishment Man: A Portrait of Power (1982).
Business Philosophy
Like all fads, corporate governance has its zealots.
Statement, May, 2003; reported by David Olive in “The World According to Conrad Black,” Toronto Star, March 11, 2007; accessible at thestar.com.
Guardian
I have long regarded The Guardian as the most nauseating newspaper in the English language.
Conrad Black, “A Magnificent Phenomenon,” Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2022/23, p. 106.
Journalists
We must express the view, based on our empirical observations, that a substantial number of journalists are ignorant, lazy, opinionated, and intellectually dishonest. The profession is heavily cluttered with aged hacks toiling through a miasma of mounting decrepitude and often alcoholism, and even more so with arrogant and abrasive youngsters who substitute “commitment” for insight.
Conrad Black, F. David Radler, and Peter G. White, “A Brief to the Special Senate Committee on the Mass Media”; reported by the Sherbrooke Record, Sherbrooke, Quebec, November 7, 1969.
[The] swarming, grunting masses of jackals calling themselves “investigative journalists.”
Op-ed column, Toronto Sun, 1989; reported by David Olive in “The World According to Conrad Black,” Toronto Star, March 11, 2007; accessible at thestar.com.
Re: Norman Mailer:
The bedraggled warhorse of American blowhardism.
Statement, 1969; reported by David Olive in “The World According to Conrad Black,” Toronto Star, March 11, 2007; accessible at thestar.com.
Stewart Alsop, one of the more torrential snivelers of the American press . . .
Statement, 1969; reported by David Olive in “The World According to Conrad Black,” Toronto Star, March 11, 2007; accessible at thestar.com.
Philosophy of Life
Since biblical times, and probably before, the wealthy have been envied and condemned.
Reported by Andrew Clark in “At some level, he’s still asking the same question as he was when he was seven or eight—Who am I?,” theguardian.com, March 16, 2007.
Greed has been severely underestimated and denigrated—unfairly so, in my opinion. There is nothing wrong with avarice as a motive, as long as it doesn’t lead to dishonest or anti-social conduct.
Interview with Peter C. Newman, reported in The Establishment Man: A Portrait of Power (1982).
Politics
Re: Canada’s welfare system:
An overgenerous reinsurance policy for an underachieving people.
Reported by David Plotz in “Conrad Black,” slate.com, August 31, 2001.
Re: The resignation of the UK Minister of Defence for the Navy to protest the government’s decision to scrap its aircraft carriers:
. . . the last resonance of good sense in that country until Maggie Thatcher came in.
Interview with Peter C. Newman, reported in The Establishment Man: A Portrait of Power (1982).
Re: the Black Panther Party:
Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, and other members of the criminal lunatic fringe.
Statement, 1968; reported by David Olive in “The World According to Conrad Black,” Toronto Star, March 11, 2007; accessible at thestar.com.
Re: Eugene J. McCarthy:
His . . . recent erratic conduct has caused many to wonder if he is even fit to continue as a mediocre, lazy, and temperamental Senator, let alone preside over the nation.
Statement, 1969; reported by David Olive in “The World According to Conrad Black,” Toronto Star, March 11, 2007; accessible at thestar.com.
Re: Robert F. Kennedy:
Bobby Kennedy, as the inimitable opportunist of contemporary American affairs, bubbled naturally to the top of this political cesspool—the wartime President’s traditional cup of hemlock.
Statement, 1969; reported by David Olive in “The World According to Conrad Black,” Toronto Star, March 11, 2007; accessible at thestar.com.
Re: Hearings on Robert H. Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court:
It is galling to see such mendacious hypocrites as [Edward] Kennedy and [Joseph] Biden at the Senate Judiciary Committee sitting in judgment on distinguished jurists.
Statement, 1988; reported by David Olive in “The World According to Conrad Black,” Toronto Star, March 11, 2007; accessible at thestar.com.
Re: Franklin Delano Roosevelt:
Thanks to Eleanor, Roosevelt was probably the only president in American history who had any direct familiarity with urban poverty.
Conrad Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom (2003).
Quebec
The present government of Quebec is the most financially and intellectually corrupt in the history of the province. There are the shady deals, brazenly conducted, and the broken promises, most conspicuously that of last October to retain Bill 63. . . . The government dragged out the ancient and totally fictitious spectre of assimilation to justify Bill 22 and its rejection of the right of free choice in education, its its reduction of English education to the lowest echelon of ministerial whim, its assault upon freedom of expression through the regulation of the internal and external language of businesses and other organizations, and its creation of a fatuous new linguistic bureaucracy that will conduct a system of organized denunciation, harassment, and patronage.
Radio broadcast, July 26, 1974; reported by Peter C. Newman in The Establishment Man: A Portrait of Power (1982).
There is a paralytic social sickness in Quebec. In all this debate, not a single French Quebecker has objected to Bill 22 on the grounds that it was undemocratic or a reduction of liberties exercised in the province. The Quebec Civil Liberties Union, founded by Pierre Trudeau, from which one might have expected such sentiments, has instead demanded the abolition of English education, and this through the spokemanship of Jean-Louis Roy, who derives his income from McGill University.
Radio broadcast, July 26, 1974; reported by Peter C. Newman in The Establishment Man: A Portrait of Power (1982).
It is clear that Mr. Bourassa . . . is now going to try to eliminate the Parti Quebecois by a policy of gradual scapegoatism directed against the non-French elements in the province. . . . The English community here, still deluding itself with the illusion of Montreal as an incomparably fine place to live, is leaderless and irrelevant, except as the hostage of a dishonest government. Last month one of the most moderate ministers, Guy St-Pierre, told an English businessman’s group, “If you don’t like Quebec, you can leave it.” With sadness but with certitude, I accept that choice.
Radio broadcast, July 26, 1974; reported by Peter C. Newman in The Establishment Man: A Portrait of Power (1982).