Duffy, James F.

The Royal Gazette, the successor to the Royal Gazette and Prince Edward Island Recorder, began publishing in August of 1830. For the most part politically nonpartisan, it printed proclamations, official government notices, verbatim reports of the proceedings of the House of Assembly and the Legislative Council, international news excerpts, fiction, poetry and local news. Local news reporting included descriptions of local events and meetings, and occasionally the annual reports of local organizations, for example, the Mechanics Institute. In 1851, following the appointment of Edward Whelan to the position of Queen's Printer, the Royal Gazette came to have a decidedly Liberal bias. The Coles administration was defended and the Conservatives attacked in the editorials of the paper. On February 24, 1854, John Ings was appointed Queen's Printer and the Royal Gazette reverted to its former nonpartisan stance. Even following Whelan's reappointment as Queen's Printer on August 1 of the same year, the Royal Gazette remained impartial, as it was to be from that time forward. During the late 1850s, the Royal Gazette mainly printed official government notices, such as proclamations, appointments and statutes, along with some foreign news, anecdotes and occasional items of local news. By the mid-1860s, everything except government notices had disappeared from the Royal Gazette. Between 1870 and 1986, the essential character of the Royal Gazette as the official government newspaper of P.E.I, did not change. Only the number of notices and the number of different types of notices changed, increasing as time passed. In the 1870s, the Royal Gazette printed mainly notices of appointments, sheriff's sales, proclamations, warrants, writs, statutes, tenders and land assessments. Insolvent's notices, partnership notices, and some court decisions began to be printed in the 1880s. By the turn of the century, court decisions had ceased to appear in the Royal Gazette, and executor's notices, administrator's notices, notices of dissolutions, sheriff's proclamations, Speeches from the Throne and lists of Acts passed at each sitting of the Legislature had begun to appear. During the 1920s, several new types of notices began to appear. These included mortgage sales, notices regarding letters patent, chancery notices and notices under the Voluntary Winding Up Act. Liquidator's notices and regulations began to be printed in the 1930s. In the 1940s, notice of annual meetings, notices under the Cooperative Associations Act and the Credit Union Societies Act, notices of rule nisi and change of name notices were all added to the types of notices printed in the Royal Gazette. In the 1950s, Temperance Act Convictions appeared, although they and the Speeches from the Throne both stopped being printed in the 1960s. In the 1970s, change of corporate name notices, government resolutions, amendments and proclamations, liquor control notices, and Quieting Title Act notices were all printed. On January 4 1975, the format of the Royal Gazette changed. It was divided into two parts: Part II contained regulations while Part I contained all other notices. During the 1980s the Royal Gazette added amalgamation notices and notices under the Companies Act to the notices it was already printing. The Royal Gazette is still being published today.