The company began in 1887, when brothers
John Bayne Maclean and
Hugh Cameron Maclean launched their first trade publication,
Canadian Grocer & General Storekeeper. Hugh left the company in 1899 and later return to Toronto to establish his own publication firm. John subsequently expanded his company into other areas of publishing, launching the general interest magazine ''
Maclean's in 1905, the business newspaper Financial Post in 1907, the lifestyle magazine Canadian Homes and Gardens'' in 1925, the women's magazine
Chatelaine in 1928, and its French-language counterpart,
Châtelaine in 1960.
Horace Talmadge Hunter joined Maclean Publishing in 1903, moving up the management ranks from general manager in 1911 to succeed John Bayne Maclean as president in 1933; in 1945 the company's name was changed to Maclean-Hunter. Hunter retired in 1952 and died in 1961. Hunter's son Donald Fleming later became president and chairman of M-H. In 1961, the company began to diversify, adding its first broadcasting asset, radio station
CFCO in
Chatham,
Ontario. In 1968
Maclean-Hunter Publishing Company Limited was renamed to
Maclean-Hunter Limited and finally as
Maclean Hunter Limited in 1981. In the 1970s, M-H merged its
Le Maclean French-language magazine with
Actualité, and began publishing ''
L'actualité. In 1982, the company acquired a controlling interest in Sun Media; ownership of the Financial Post'' was transferred to Sun Media for $46 millions in 1987 to facilitate the publication's expansion from a weekly to a daily newspaper. The following year Maclean Hunter acquired additional shares of Sun Media, bringing its total ownership to 60.5% of all shares (up from 50.8% in 1987). By the early 1990s, Maclean-Hunter's assets also included cable television services in 35 Ontario markets, 21 radio stations, television station
CFCN in
Calgary and a significant minority share in
CTV. Maclean-Hunter was acquired in 1994 by
Rogers Communications. The
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission approved the transaction, but required Rogers to divest itself of some of Maclean-Hunter's individual assets to alleviate concerns about
concentration of media ownership.
Shaw Communications acquired some of the cable holdings and radio stations,
Telemedia and
Blackburn Radio acquired other radio stations,
Maritime Broadcasting System acquired the maritime stations, and the consortium of
Baton Broadcasting and
Electrohome acquired CFCN and the CTV shares. Sun Media was sold in an employee buyout in 1996. Maclean-Hunter also had cable holdings in the
United States, which were acquired by
Comcast in 1994 for $1.27bn. In 2016 ''L'actualité'' was sold to Mishmash (XPND Capital). The former assets of Maclean-Hunter, including ''Maclean's'' magazine, were sold by Rogers to
St. Joseph Communications in March 2019. ==Operations==