In 1951, weekly Montreal-based paper The Standard was repackaged, combining the old rotogravure and magazine sections and jettisoning the newspaper component and all fiction, to become Weekend Picture Magazine. This weekly magazine was circulated to homes throughout Canada through a distribution arrangement with a growing number of local newspapers. The distribution agreement enabled the magazine to reach record circulation numbers (approx. 2.5 million at its peak in combination with French language sister magazine Perspectives). Perspectives was launched in 1959 and at first was little more than a duplicate of the English language Weekend (articles written in English were simply translated, and Weekend staff photographs were re-used in different layouts). Perspectives, though, quickly grew into a separate entity in its own right, providing original and relevant French language articles and original photography to its readers.
In the mid-60s Weekend faced its first true business competitor when Southam launched its own weekly magazine in similar format, "The Canadian". Immediately dividing the print advertising market in two, Weekend struggled to continue. Historically keeping a number of talented photographers on as permanent staff members it came to rely more heavily on freelancers and found many other ways to cut costs and remain competitive. In 1977 under editorship of John MacFarlane the magazine's head offices were moved to Toronto and the magazine was completely redesigned. The magazine stopped using staff photographers all together and under newly appointed art director Robert Priest Weekend Magazine adopted a modern look.
Weekend ceased to be published in 1979 (after having been briefly combined with "The Canadian" as "The Canadian Weekend," a failed experiment). During this year, the historic photo library of Weekend Magazine was transferred to the then Public Archives of Canada.
The collection consists of many -though not all- of the images published in The Standard for the years 1945-1951 and for the new publication Weekend Magazine 1951-1977. There is a relatively small quantity of photographs used in Perspectives and date from 1959-1972 only. (The majority of the Perspectives photographs were taken by Weekend staff photographers). The photographs are generally arranged by docket number and so are mainly chronological. It should be noted that while close to all of the negatives in the collection would have appeared in print in the publications, many of the total number of images that appeared in the publications are not to be found in this collection. The Standard, Weekend and Perspectives all used photography created by other sources, such as National Film Board of Canada photostories and newswire images. In addition, through human error or the decision to create storage space, many items were destroyed or lost. Despite this, the collection is overwhelming in scope, providing a wealth of Canadian commercial and documentary photography.
In addition to photographic images used in publication, there are a number of photographs taken but never used in publication. This material dates primarily to 1966-1975 but many Standard assignments contain "outs" (though not full rolls, as the Weekend material does).
Weekend Magazine's appeal to readers was its bright colour photographs, and so this makes up a large portion of the collection. There is also a large quantity of black and white copy negatives; Weekend's policy (loosely followed) was to create copies of photos taken by non-staff and return the originals to the freelancer after use in publication. The owners of the Montreal-Perspectives publications was the Montreal-based McConnell family. One of their subsidiaries was Canada Wide Feature Service, a news service bureau that re-used many images from this collection in other national and interntional publications.
