Le Progrès served a double function: it acted as a mirror of the local French community and was also its window to the outside world. But people of that era were not plugged into the global scene as they are today. In spite of recent innovations like telephones and telegraphs, news sometimes took weeks, if not months to travel around the world. For francophone readers in Windsor/ Essex/Kent, Le Progrès was an important opening onto this world - a world that was beset with rapid, sometimes violent changes, a world that was often incomprehensible for people who had grown up in a much more relaxed era. What kinds of news did Le Progrès bring to its readers? The choice was important: the readers had to be be informed and amazed, kept interested as well as entertained. At the same time, care had to be taken not to shock or scandalize the more delicate sensibilities.

A little scandal was not a bad thing, however, and just like today, sex and violence sold a lot of newspapers. Journalistic standards were somewhat more relaxed than today, and the presentation of news items often seemed to follow no logical order. For example, on a date chosen at random, the front page of the July 27 1893 edition offers a real dog’s breakfast of items: the Liberal party platform, a murder in Detroit, three women killing each other in Mexico, a divorce at the age of 101, the arrest of a fugitive in Quebec, medical miracles in the U.S. and in Lévis, atrocities in Madagascar, unemployment in Toronto, an important discovery by a French-Canadian metallurgist, a treasure in Alabama and an unsuccessful lynching (lynchings seem to be reported with disconcerting regularity in Le Progrès) . On April 5 1894, the front-page news include the story of a charitable vicar in Quebec City, a ghost in Trois-Rivières, local news from Sandwich as well as from the Sandwich Islands, a shipwreck in Sweden, an anarchist bombing in Paris, a bizarre death in Toledo and a strange case of a needle making its way through a woman’s body . In short, something for every taste. The idea was to attract readers in the hopes that they would then turn to the inside pages and discover the more substantial articles and editorials there.

But Le Progrès also reported real news - that is to say, current events - on the national as well as on the international level. French-Canadians in Windsor were well informed in regard to the events transpiring during the North-Western Rebellion , leading to the death of Louis Riel . The death of John A. MacDonald received fair and sober coverage, in spite of Le Progrès’s well-established animosity towards this particular Father of Confederation . Obviously, Wilfrid Laurier’s activities were well covered in Le Progrès ; other Liberal papers of this era were no less enthusiastic about their leader . Not all Canadian news was political, though; for example the Klondyke gold rush did not pass unnoticed in the pages of Le Rempart .

On the international stage, close proximity to the United States ensured good coverage of events in that country; it should be recalled that, from the first, Le Progrès was aimed at the “French-Canadians of Windsor and Detroit.” Most readers would have had relatives on both sides of the border. You can read local Detroit in other sections of this web site (especially in the Crime and Frontier Town pages of the Windsor section). But Le Progrès also covered events of national importance to the United States, such as the death of president Garfield , the Chicago World’s Fair and the war in the Philippines .

Overseas, Le Progrès focused largely on news from France and England. Readers followed the Dreyfus affaire in France , . Events in the British empire had a more direct bearing on Canadians. When England declared war on the Boers in South Africa, Le Progrès kept its readers informed on developments on the battlefield as well as repercussions at home , , , . But people’s horizons were rapidly expanding beyond the interests of the two colonial powers and Le Progrès strove to inform its readers of other events in the wide world, like for example the Cossack massacres in Russia . The war between China and Japan (1894), which would have many repercussions in the next century, was one of the first international events to be covered by Le Progrès in a truly modern fashion, featuring front page wire service stories for several consectutive weeks , , , .