Robert James Cromie was a Canadian newspaper publisher. He published the Vancouver Sun from 1917 until his death. Cromie was born on July 4, 1887 in Scotstown, Quebec to Henry James Cromie of Ireland and Sarah Ann Guy of Australia.
Cromie moved to Winnipeg as a teenager, where he worked as a junior office boy with the wholesale grocery firm Foley, Lock, and Larson and was associated with Winnipeg's Mariaggi hotel for approximately two years. During this period he put in 12 to 14 hours a day as waiter, captain of the bell boys and assistant bookkeeper and attending night school and the Y.M.C.A. It was as a bellhop at the Mariaggi Hotel that Cromie met General J.W. Stewart who hired him in 1906 to work at the Vancouver firm of Foley, Welch and Stewart, a large railway construction company. The story of the meeting of Cromie and Stewart, during which Cromie impressed Stewart by "returning half" of a "sizeable tip", saying it was "too much" is an item of "Vancouver newspaper folklore". A version of the story appears in a profile entitled “Cromie of the Sun,” published in the Nov. 1, 1928 issue of Maclean's magazine, provided by an eastern businessman: On 6 Sept. 1911, Cromie married Bernadette Grace Mcfeely, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Edward J. McFeely, by the Rev. Father Welch at the Church of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary in Vancouver. At the time of his marriage, Cromie was the Vancouver purchasing agent for Foley, Welch & Stewart and was also serving as private secretary to Stewart. Stewart and Cromie's names appear on the permit for the 1912 'Stewart and Cromie Warehouse', now the 'Percival Building', on Hamilton Street in Vancouver. In 1917 Cromie was put in charge of the Vancouver Sun, a property of Foley, Welch and Stewart, and, by August, 1917, he had become the owner of the newspaper.
Consolidation of the ''Vancouver Sun''
As publisher of the Vancouver Sun, he absorbed the newspaper's two main competitors, The News-Advertiser and the Vancouver World, and built the Vancouver Sun into one of the city's two leading dailies. The consolidation of the Vancouver Sun with The News-Advertiser and the Vancouver World is described by Stephen Hume as follows: D.A. McGregor described Cromie's acquisition and consolidation of the Sun as follows in 1946:
The ''Sun'' Under Cromie
The Sun under Cromie posed as the champion of British Columbia against what it called selfish eastern interests: The Vancouver Sun under Cromie's ownership was described by Stuart Keate, publisher of the Vancouver Sun from 1964 until his retirement in 1978, as: , Northwest Territories, June, 1934 In his 1961 book Vancouver: From Milltown to Metropolis Alan Morley observed, a propos of Cromie in his capacity as publisher of the Vancouver Sun:
Obituary Tributes
Cromie died suddenly on May 11, 1936 in Oak Bay, British Columbia. In an obituary for Cromie published in the Winnipeg Evening Tribune on May 12, 1936, British Columbia PremierDuff Pattullo was quoted as saying that: The Hon. Ian Alistair Mackenzie, Minister of Defence, and member for the past 15 years of the British Columbia legislature and of the House of Commons for Vancouver ridings was quoted as saying: :"In my opinion, Robert Cromie did more for Vancouver and British Columbia in the last 20 years than any other single man. He had a vision of greatness for his home city and he worked tirelessly for its achievement.” Mayor Gerry McGeer of Vancouver, Liberal House Member for Vancouver-Burrard, said: B.C. Nicholas, editor of the Victoria Times, said:
Succession
Cromie's three sons, Donald, Samuel and Peter took over running the paper. In 1963 Donald Cameron Cromie sold the Sun to FP Publications.
