(7 June 1854-20 Feb. 1932), newspaperman. Born London, Eng. (date of birth 1852 also found) Parents: William J. Gibbens and his wife Emma. William Gibbens, the subject of the present article, attended a private school in Dorking, Eng. He came to Canada, July 1869, or by another account, in 1868. In Canada, after a period of commercial work, he began newspaper work with the Brockville Recorder. He was afterwards a journalist with the Ottawa Citizen, founder of the Standard in Rapid City, Manitoba, and once again, a journalist with the Ottawa Citizen. In August 1888, he came to Cornwall, Ont. For a period of more than 43 years, from 7 Sept. 1888 till his death, Gibbens managed and edited the Cornwall Standard (founded 1886). Until the death in 1907 of the Standard’s proprietor, the GC native R. R. (Big Rory) McLennan, Gibbens was acting on behalf of McLennan. The Standard was a Conservative newspaper, serving and supporting McLennan’s political needs. McLennan also had a Conservative newspaper at Alexandria, the Glengarrian. In his will, McLennan left Gibbens $3000 and the use for his lifetime of the Standard plant and the part of the Standard Block occupied by Gibbens. (Cornwall Standard 5 April 1907; McLennan’s will in SDG Surrogate Court files)

     The Standard continued after McLennan’s death to be under Gibbens’ long-maintained editorship the Cornwall Conservative paper. The Freeholder during the same years was the Liberal paper. Both papers through their partisan role were active players in the GC elections. Both reported much GC news, especially from Charlottenburgh Township, the portion of GC nearest to Cornwall. Many a GC obituary important to students of GC history or genealogy was, we may assume, either written by Gibbens or licked into final shape by him. The Standard office also did a wide variety of commercial printing work, including the production of Pringle’s Lunenburg of 1890.

     The Standard was an austere, rather colourless publication, far from rhetoric or sensationalism; whereas the Freeholder, equally respectable and responsible, now and then took on a flash of colour. During much of the long period throughout which Gibbens edited the Standard, C.W. Young, edited the Freeholder (Young’s tenure at the Freeholder was from 1885 till he gave up active editorial management to his son a few years before his death in 1927). Harkness describes the papers as being edited “in friendly rivalry.” In earlier years there had been, indeed, occasional clashes of personality, but later and over many years Harkness’ observation was exactly true. When the Freeholder offices were gutted by fire in 1922, the Standard made its services available for publication of a short edition of the rival paper. (Cornwall Freeholder 2 Feb. 1922)

     As with the Glengarry News, so during the tenure of these two editors, the political partisanship weakened over the years, sliding into mere dutifulness. However, attentive readers of the microfilms of issues from the period even after this had happened, asking themselves why an obituary or some other article of personal interest was printed in one Cornwall paper rather than the other, will suspect that the readership of the papers, based albeit on inertia and family custom more than energetic reader choice, reflected old and in terms of actual public feelings increasingly anachronistic political loyalties, the Standard readership being predominantly Conservative, the Freeholder to the same extent Liberal.

     A few months after Gibbens’ death, the Standard and the Freeholder were merged to form the Standard-Freeholder. In the final stages of its independent existence the Standard had separate town and county editions, but unlike the Freeholder it continued to be a weekly right up to the last. Gibbens was an Anglican and a Mason. He was married to Florence S. Culbert, of Lindsay, Ont. (1 child) Their daughter Miss Gertrude Gibbens (b. Ottawa, Ont., 1884) died less than two weeks after the Standard and Freeholder were merged. (her obituary, Standard Freeholder 11 May 1932)

Cornwall Freeholder 20 Feb. 1932, Cornwall Standard 25 Feb. 1932 (portrait) * Who’s Who and Why 1921 [Canada] 1110 * Harkness, 375, 377 (portrait) * life of R. R. McLennan, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, XIII * Senior * Stiles 12 (portrait) * notes on hist. of Cornwall Standard, in Standard Freeholder 13 May 1936, 28 April 1945 (a printer’s recollections, by J. F. Day), 24 Aug. 1946 (DTL), 28 Aug. 1948 (DTL) * editorial appreciation of Gilbert A. Larue’s tribute to the late William Gibbens, CS 7 April 1932 * merger of CS and CF announced, CS 21 April 1932