In 1951, the weekly Montreal-based paper the Standard was repackaged, combining the rotogravure and magazine sections and jettisoning the news and fiction components, 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 duplication 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 the Southam Company launched its own weekly magazine in a similar format, "The Canadian." Immediately dividing the print advertising market in half, 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 John Macfarlane the magazine's head office was moved to Toronto. 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 combined, briefly, with "The Canadian" as "The Canadian Weekend," a failed experiment). During this year, the 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 for 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 held here were taken by Weekend Magazine staff). 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 in the publications are not to be found in this collection. The Standard, Weekend and Perspectives all used photographs created by other sources, such as the National Film Board of Canada's 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 and provides a wealth of Canadian commercial and documentary photography.
In addition to photographic images used in publication, there are a number of photographs in the collection that were taken but never used. This material dates primarily to 1966-1975 for the Weekend magazine photographs but for many Standard assignments contain "outs" (though never full rolls, as the Weekend material does).
Weekend Magazine's appeal to readers was based on its heavy use of bright colour photographs; this collection contains approx 44,262 colour images. There is a larger quantity of black and white material. Among these are many copy negatives. Weekend's policy (loosely followed) was to create b&w 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 for publication in other national and international publications.
