Thaddeus Stevens and James Brewster launched the weekly Moncton Times in 1868, and grew the newspaper to daily publication in 1877. In a time when newspapers were unabashedly partisan, a group of Liberal businessmen bought a weekly paper in Sackville called The Transcript in 1882 and moved it to Moncton, immediately establishing it as a daily to compete with the Tory Moncton Times. The Moncton Tra
nscript failed to really compete until 1887, when the firebrand John T. Hawke was brought in from Ottawa to take over as publisher, a political move said to have been engineered by Sir Wilfred Laurier himself. Stevens and Hawke soon were warring daily in their newspapers' editorials, to the delight of a growing base of readers. Stevens left the Times in 1893, amidst the scandal and legal bills of his wife being charged with manslaughter. Hawke, meanwhile, placed his stamp on the Moncton area from 1887 until 1922, when he died at the helm of the Transcript. The two newspapers were both purchased by Moncton Publishers Ltd. in 1945, ending years of rivalry. Moncton Publishers was bought three years later by K.C. Irving's New Brunswick Publishing Company Ltd., which created a subsidiary Moncton company to run the city's papers. The two newspapers merged as The Times-Transcript in 1983. The Times-Transcript continued as an afternoon daily until 1997, when it switched to mornings and became The Times & Transcript.
