A brief history of The Gateway: 1910 to present
The Gateway has had a long history spanning 115 years, some of which The Gateway spent doing arguably ridiculous things.
The Gateway1910–1953: War, typhoid, and hoaxes
1910 November 21 – First edition of The Gateway goes to print
1911 – Two gateway editors contracted typhoid. Only six issues were published that year.
1917 November 2 – The Gateway sent to front lines. “Our object, primarily, in publishing the paper this year is to forward it to the front.” 282 from the U of A were in the war.
1938 January – The Gateway helps found the Canadian University Press (CUP) and helped produce the collective’s constitution.
1953 December 10 – Divorce and illegitimacy said to be solved by free love. A free-love society was created, saying it would solve the above problems. Political figures and University officials were nominated as honorary members. It appeared in five daily Alberta papers and a British United Press report. Various North American dailies in California, Washington, Seattle, and Toronto carried the story. This was later revealed to be a Gateway fabrication.
1954–1959: New format, same shenanigans
1954 September 24 – The Gateway adopts a new format. The paper goes from a broadsheet to a tabloid paper size and publishes two times a week. “While many students may prefer the attractiveness of the former size page, this setup will enable The Gateway, it is hoped, to provide eventually quicker weekend news coverage published two times a week instead of weekly as formerly.”
1954 November 12 – The Gateway news policy is outlined. Editors draw up news policy: includes right to rewrite, and be the sole judge of how much coverage an event deserves. “The Gateway feels that this policy will enable the paper to be fair to all clubs on campus. In other words, every executive will be angry at the paper, not just a few as at present.”
1958 – The Gateway considered suing CBC TV for “illicitly” naming a show Gateway.
December 10 1959 – Joe Clark, in his final editorial as Editor-in-Chief, writes: “nobody likes to call a halt to that which he enjoys. While all who read The Gateway may not share my feelings, I have enjoyed this year. My only regret is that it is more likely to be remembered as the year of masturbation and the cop-bait, than as a year in which The Gateway tried to make the campus think.”
1959 January 30 – The Gateway perpetuated the hoax of a murdered frosh president. “MURDERED” screamed the front-page headline. The frosh president was actually created by two law students who sent letters to the paper; upon discovering that the president didn’t actually exist, The Gateway editors decided to kill off the never-alive student politician — confusing many readers and the mainstream press in the process.
1961–1978: The Gateway versus the SU, round one
1961 January 20 – Fink of the week: the start of a new weekly contest for students to vote for whom they hated every week. “This person will then have his or her picture placed on a dartboard made from Carlings beer cases where it will be the daily target practice of [the] dart contest in the Evans-Francis pad. It will also be subjected to pithy insults from the stream of distinguished visitors who visit this site continuously.”
1964 November 3 – Tuition costs keep climbing: Executive Assistant to the University President predicted that tuition could rise to $625 in tens years’ time!
1965 September 29 – The Gateway mascot ends her career, Regina the rat had been with the paper since early 1964. In the summer, she was (allegedly) kidnapped by the Engineering Students Society and later died of an eye infection.
1972 – The Gateway, owned at the time by the Students’ Union, revolted after the SU overroad The Gateway selection for Editor-In-Chief for a student with no experience with The Gateway. Staff went on strike. Staff eventually resigned and created the Poundmaker, which was printed in a house just off campus.
1975 –The Gateway returns, still owned by the SU but fiercely focused on independent journalism.
1976 September 21 – Staff photographer Keith Miller was arrested at a cricket match with the Edmonton 61 for protesting apartheid. He spent the night in city jail.
1978 February 9 – The Gateway was sued for an editorial over the SU General Manager’s resignation. Council paid $250 to the former GM to have the suit dropped, but the Editor-In-Chief continued to defend the editorial as fair comment.
1978 March – Rival newspaper, Campus News, tricked a Gateway editor into signing away rights to all Gateway copy. The Gateway’s copy was the only content in the short-lived competitor.
1981–1993: Comics and spoofs
1981 October – The Gateway was confiscated by the police for reporting on an arson in SUB. The editors sued and later settled out of court for $3,000.
1987 October 29 – The paper ran an anti-free trade editorial cartoon of a beave being screwed by Uncle Sam. Rick Steadman, SU vice-president (internal), said “the beaver wasn’t smiling.”
1988 January 12 – The Editor-In-Chief from 1974–75 explained the success of the early issue of The Getaway, The Gateway’s annual spoof of itself, as “we knew it was going to be a successful spoof when CBC’s camera crew showed up the next day looking for the MSRTV tank we had reported Campus Security had purchased to control parking violations.
1993 January 5 – The Gateway comes under fire for an editorial cartoon depicting the birth of Jesus in present-day Israel — with the infant being harassed by an Israeli soldier. It garnered national attention — but not necessarily in a good way.
1998 January 13 – Space Moose cartoonist Adam Thrasher was fined for discrimination after The Gateway didn’t run but provided a web address for a comic strip depicting Thrasher’s characters shoot women at a Take Back the Night rally.
2000–2025: The Autonomy era
2000 April 6 – Editor-In-Chief Neal Ozano successfully faked his death in a farcical obituary titled “Neal Ozano dead at 23.” The President offered to bring the flag down to half-mast. No one was impressed to learn it was a hoax.
2002 Spring – The Gateway successfully runs a referendum to gain its independence from the SU. Its independence came at the cost of $2.50 for full-time, and $1.25 for part-time students. “Finally, we’re free to pursue [our ideas] without having to go through miles of red tape and a mountain of bureaucracy,” said former EIC Dan Lazin.
2016 – The Gateway moves from a newspaper to a monthly magazine. The magazine later won the Alberta Magazine Publishers Association “Best New Alberta Magazine” award in 2020.
2018 – The Gateway is sued by Kerry Diotte, a Member of Parliament in Edmonton, for two articles that labelled Diotte as a racist. The Gateway later retracted the articles and published an apology.
2021 – The Gateway loses its funding after an unsuccessful referendum. The Gateway moved to focus on its online content being published on its site. Staff positions were cut to save money, but The Gateway continued reporting on campus news.
2024 – The Gateway wins its referendum to regain its student funding for a $2.64 fee per semester, and a $1.32 fee for spring and summer semesters. The Gateway expands its staff, hiring an Arts & Culture Editor, an additional Staff Reporter, and a Sports Reporter. The Gateway returns to publishing a traditional newspaper quarterly and undergoes strategic planning to chart the path forward.
2025 November – The Gateway celebrated 115 years of serving the University of Alberta community with hyper-local, student-driven news. The Gateway has now returned to a monthly newspaper while still publishing daily online.
You can view The Gateway‘s archives online.
