Oldest English-language paper in North America on death bed

This is not the first time the Quebec Chronicle- Telegraph, North America's oldest newspaper, has ceased publication. There was that period during the American Revolution when Quebec City was under attack by the Continental army and the presses stopped. More than 200 years later, vanishing readers and unpaid suppliers are the ones battering the English-language weekly, forcing it to suspend publication three weeks ago and fuelling speculation about its survival. Founded in 1764 as the Quebec Gazette, the Chronicle- Telegraph serves an ever-shrinking anglophone population in the provincial capital, and it has not escaped the continent-wide struggle of newspapers to retain readers and advertisers. But critics in the city's English-speaking community say the newspaper's decline has been hastened by the publisher's insistence on using the paper as a forum for his conservative religious views.