What Was Left Of The Grand Old St. Catharines Standard Has Gone Up In Flames

An Obituary For A Building That Once Housed What Was One Very Fine, Locally-Owned Daily Newspaper

A Few Thoughts and Memories shared by Doug Draper and by some of his former Standard colleagues.

Posted December 8th, 2025 on Niagara At Large

By Niagara At Large reporter/publisher and former St. Catharines Standard reporter Doug Draper –

When, on my own terms and after 20 years of working there. I walked out of the door of that building on Queen Street that housed The St. Catharines Standard for the last time, I vowed never to go near it again.

For most of the past 25years, I would not even drive passed it in my car.

But when I learned this past Saturday (December 6^th) morning that the building had been gutted by fire, something inside me made drive, as soon as I could, to St. Catharines’ downtown to get as close to the smoldering remains of it as the firefighters, still hosing piles of hot embers down, would let me.

As I looked on, memories of The Standard, not the bad ones of the place after the place after the corporate chains took it over in the mid-to-late 1990s and began gutting it in their own way, but the very good ones I have when it was still locally owned and operated by the Burgoyne family, with Henry Burgoyne serving as the family’s last publisher,

I was fortunate enough to be hired in 1978 right out of journalism school and during those post-Watergate years when newspapers were still riding high by then managing editor Larry Smith, shortly before his retirement, and less than a year later Larry’s successor Murray Thomson created the first full-time environment beat in Canada for a paper the Standard’s size and there I was covering environmental issues for the better part of 20 years.

It was my dream job and what is  more, I was also fortunate enough to be working in a newsroom, back in the days when newspapers like The Standard still had newsrooms, with a great group of people who inspired me, every single day I was there, to do my best for the community we all served.

I thought of so many of them and as I walked around the smoldering remains of the building we worked in, I was also reminded that this place once housed everything necessary to produce a daily newspaper, from start to finish – reporters and photographers, the ad and circulation departments, the composing room and the presses that rolled off those finished bundles that the red trucks with the Standard logo on them dropped off for the newspaper carriers.

There are very few communities across this country that are fortunate enough to have a building like that anymore that house everyone and everything it takes to produce what someone way back called that “daily miracle.”

So if it is possible to mourn for the loss of a building and all it once stood for, I confess that I did that on Saturday, with more than a few tears in my eyes as I was reminded once again that community newspapers like that may never come back.

Now here are some words that some of my former Standard colleagues where kind enough to share for this piece –

From former Standard reporter and editor Joan Wiley –

“It’s surprising how emotional I am about the recent gutting by fire of the St. Catharines Standard building.

The Standard played a significant part in my professional and family lives.

Before I even started to work for the family newspaper as a summer intern in 1973, I would stand mesmerized, watching the giant presses rolling out that day’s paper

There were huge changes in journalism and technology in the two decades I worked there, first as a reporter, then as an editor. Women were grossly underrepresented in the newsroom in the beginning; when I left in ’97, close to half of the reporters and editors were women. As an intern, I started my career on a typewriter with copy paper; when I left, we were on our second or third computer system. The biggest change was the sale of the family-owned newspaper to a chain.

My two children were born during my stint at the paper. It’s my understanding that my first pregnancy was a first also for the newsroom. Times were changing.

Furthermore, I was half of a married journalism couple – John Storm was my husband, another reporter – and that also was unusual. What wasn’t unusual was the making of lifelong friends.”

I think of all this and more as I study the pictures of the fire. …

Can you grieve for a building? The answer is most certainly yes.”

Former  Standard reporter Kevin McMahon, who is now a very successful filmmaker with his own company, Primitive Entertinament, based in Toronto –

“I also felt oddly emotional when a friend sent footage of the Standard building on fire. Though it was somehow not as bad as driving by and seeing it so derelict. I know you (the others who shared thoughts here) all have a more complicated relationship with what was the paper – for me it is just rosy memories.

I tried to capture a sense of the importance of newspapers in the film I made about The Star during the pandemic, though I was much too soft on the paper’s management which turned around and closed a bunch of their subsidiary newsrooms soon after. Alas. Everyone blames social media. But I think greed has as much to do with it.”

From former Standard reporter Michael Clarkson –

That building was an incubator for serious writers of the 1980s. Thanks to the freedom given by (managing editor) Murray (Thomson) and (publisher) Henry (Burgoyne), we put The Standard on the provincial and national maps with comprehensive beat coverage and in-depth investigations.

If those old walls could only talk.”

From former Standard reporter Peter Cooney, who went on to work for Reuters, including the news agency’s office in Washington, D.C. –

“That (photos of the burned out building) is a depressing sight. All too symbolic of what is happening to newspapers in general.

The Standard was my first full-time job in journalism. Sad to see what has happened to it and so many other once-quality newspapers across North America.”

From former Standard reporter and columnist John Nicol, who went on to work for CBC and other news venues –

“The building itself was sterile, but inside it was cushioned with an ambience of caring, if not love.

In most recent times, that ambience was dictated by Henry Burgoyne, who carried on the family tradition of jobs for life, so the place was peopled by great characters who had been there so long that they became part of the furniture.

Obviously, the people made the place, from the stewardship of Murray Thomson, the witty city editors he put in place, to the reporters who continue to this day to make Niagara a better place.

I won’t mourn the building itself, even though I took the staircases two steps at a time—I couldn’t wait to enjoy not the building but the world of opportunities and the family atmosphere created by the Burgoynes.

Finally, TV Ontario did a short piece a decade or so ago that it still broadcasts from time to time on downtown St. Catharines, which contains a fair amount of content about the Burgoyne- owned The St. Catharines Standard before the corporate chains bought it up and began gutting it. To watch it click on the screen immediately below –

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