WATCH: Huntingdon’s local English paper, The Gleaner, is one of Quebec’s oldest weeklies and it’s facing some major changes As Kelly Greig reports, many residents aren’t happy.
The third-oldest weekly newspaper in Canada, The Gleaner, is facing some major changes.
Next week will be the paper’s last stand-alone edition. From then on it will be an insert in Valleyfield’s Le Journal Saint-François.
“For the Anglophone community, it’s just another strike,” said the Quebec Community Newspaper Association’s Richard Tardif.
“Yes, they say it’s going to be an insert but it’s going into a French paper.”
“They’re not going to serve any more Anglophones.”
The weekly is owned by Transcontinental Media.
Benoit Caron is the Vice-President of Regional Operations and insisted this is actually good news for the paper because the circulation of the Journal Saint-François is ten times that of The Gleaner.
“It’s going to be covering Soulanges to Vaudreuil then Howick to Dundee,” he said.
Tardif pointed out that the people who will now receive the paper won’t even live in the area the Gleaner’s news covers.
“It’s, in fact, closing.”
“It’ll leave the mainstream,” he said.
“It’ll be archives and that’s where you’ll find issues of the Gleaner, so it’s not really moving,”
The news of the change came as a surprise to many residents.
James Dybka lives in Hichinbrooke and an avid Gleaner reader. He said he only learned of the news once a friend posted it on social media because the announcement was buried in the back pages.
“It’s very important, it’s a paper that’s been around for over 100 years, it’s part of our community especially the English community,” he said.
He too thinks that this is the beginning of the end of the 152-year-old weekly.
“I think it’ll eventually in a couple of months fade out,” he said.
“Even over the last year, the size of our paper has shrunk from what’s it’s been over the years. Slowly but surely.”
The last copy of The Gleaner will be available June 15, changes come into effect June 24.
How do you feel about the changes? Is it really a nail in the coffin for the newspaper? Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook here.
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