From the substantial profits of commercial television, he bought many titles such as The Times and Kemsley Newspapers which published The Sunday Times;[3] both of these are nowadays owned by News UK, a division of News Corp. Thomson was born on 5 June 1894 as Roy Herbert Thomson in Toronto, then part of York County, Ontario, Canada.

His father was Herbert Thomson, a telegraphist turned barber who worked at Toronto's Grosvenor Hotel (at the corner of Yonge and Alexander streets – now the site of the Courtyard Marriott), and English-born Alice Maud.

Thomson's ancestors were small tenant farmers on the estates of the Dukes of Buccleuch at Bo'ness, in the parish of Westerkirk, Dumfriesshire, Scotland.

Archibald Thomson emigrated from Westerkirk to Canada (then British North America) in 1773, and married Elizabeth McKay of Quebec.

The family eventually settled in Upper Canada, but retained a sentimental attachment to their country of origin.

During World War I, Roy Thomson attended a business college, and owing to bad eyesight, avoided conscription.

He began an expansion of radio stations and newspapers in various Ontario locations in partnership with fellow Canadian Jack Kent Cooke.

In 1959, Thomson purchased the Kemsley group of newspapers, the largest in Britain, which included The Sunday Times.

A modest man, who had little time for pretentious displays of wealth, in Britain he got by virtually unnoticed, riding the London Underground to his office each day.

Nonetheless, he made his son Kenneth promise to use the hereditary title that he had received in 1964, if only in the London offices of the firm.

In any case, as the peerage title he had was inherited, it did not debar him from retaining his Canadian citizenship, and he never took up his right to a seat in the pre-1999 House of Lords.

He was appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE) in the 1970 New Year Honours.