About Grand Forks Gazette

Grand Forks Gazette

The Grand Forks Gazette is the weekly newspaper of Grand Forks, British Columbia — founded in 1897, the same year the city was incorporated, and published ever since. A Wednesday weekly in broadsheet format, owned by Black Press, it is the Boundary country's paper: the local news, the sports, the city council, the Border Bruins, the floods and the fires, covered for more than 125 years. Publisher: Eric Lawson. Editor: Della Mallette. Circulation: 1,823 (October 2022). (Wikipedia lists grandforksgazette.ca as its website.)

Overview

The Grand Forks Gazette is the Boundary's elder: the local newspaper of Grand Forks, B.C., founded in 1897 — the year the city incorporated — and still publishing every Wednesday. For more than 125 years it has been the region's record: the mining booms, the orchards, the floods, the community. Its distinction is its unbroken run in a small city: founded when Grand Forks was a frontier mining town, still publishing as a modern Boundary community.

The paper's home tells the story: 7330 Second Street, an old brick building possibly as old as the newspaper itself, standing by itself in downtown Grand Forks with a driveway to one side and an empty lot on the other. Inside, the front office holds a small "museum" of publishing artefacts — typewriters, stamps, past awards and plaques, typesetting paraphernalia — and an archive of recent newspapers for the public's perusal. The building is the paper's monument: the 1897 newspaper in its 19th-century home. The coordinates — N 49° 01.987, W 118° 26.227 — mark a waymark for newspaper-history enthusiasts: the Gazette's headquarters, the old brick building, the museum of publishing artefacts, the archive of recent newspapers open to the public. It is one of the oldest buildings in the province that still houses its original business — the paper and its home, aging together.

History

The Gazette was founded in 1897 — the year Grand Forks was incorporated as a city (April 15, 1897), the year the Boundary country was booming. The city's name tells its geography: the Grand Forks, the junction where the North Fork of the Kettle River meets the main stream — the confluence that made the townsite. The district had long been known as Grande Prairie (named in early October 1859, when the British Boundary Commission and its American counterpart surveyed the 49th parallel, and a Royal Engineers party camped near present-day Grand Forks). The Grand Forks post office opened January 1, 1895; the city incorporated April 15, 1897; and the Gazette began publishing the same year — the city and its paper, born together. The mining town needed its paper, and the Gazette has published ever since: through the mining era, the agricultural era, the modern era. While others came and went — the Grand Forks Sun among them — the Gazette survived.

The paper's archive is the region's memory: Newspapers.com holds 48,411 pages of the Gazette, spanning 1905 to 2025 — more than a century of Boundary history, digitized and searchable. The floods are there: 1902, 1948 (when a wall of water broke through the old Granby dam and filled downtown with water in minutes, causing an estimated $70,000 in damage), 2018 (the catastrophic May flood that devastated the city). The Gazette covered them all — the paper that floods with its town. The May 2018 flood was the modern catastrophe: the morning of May 9 started like no previous time in the city's recent past, the Granby and Kettle Rivers rising very quickly, higher than in previous years. By day's end the rapid rise breached the banks where the rivers meet, and much of downtown Grand Forks and surrounding neighborhoods were flooded. People were evacuated — some unable to return home for years; businesses were destroyed, livelihoods lost. Miraculously, through the work of city staff, fire and rescue, first responders, the Department of National Defence and the provincial emergency management team, no lives were lost. The Gazette's flood coverage — the rescue, the devastation, the recovery — was the paper doing what it has done since 1897: documenting the Boundary's disasters and its resilience.

The Gazette is owned by Black Press, which operates more than 150 titles in print and online. The paper publishes in cooperation with the Nelson Star, the Rossland News, Castlegar News and the Trail Daily Times — the Kootenay-Boundary papers under one roof, sharing resources while keeping local voices. The cooperation is the modern community-newspaper model: the chain's scale, the towns' papers — the Gazette keeping its Boundary voice while drawing on the group's strength.

Content

The Gazette features local news, sports and local events: city council coverage, Border Bruin hockey, columns on local issues, feature stories on residents and local history. Its beats are the Boundary's perennial stories: the rivers and the floods, the orchards and the farms, the small-city government, the community events. The Border Bruins — the junior hockey team — get the sports coverage; the city council gets the watchdog coverage; the residents and the local history get the features. The Gazette is the complete small-town paper: the news, the sports, the columns, the history — everything the Boundary needs to know about itself. The paper also publishes the West Kootenay Advertiser, a weekly shopper published Fridays reaching 27,000 homes in the West Kootenay and Boundary region — the advertising companion to the Gazette's news.

Coverage and Audience

The paper serves Grand Forks and the Boundary country — the Kettle River valley, the orchards, the small towns of the West Kootenay-Boundary. The Boundary is the in-between country: between the Okanagan and the Kootenays, between the mountains and the border — the orchards and the ranches, the rivers and the forests. The Gazette is its paper: the small-city weekly that covers the region the dailies overlook. Its readers are the Boundary's people: the farmers, the orchardists, the small-business owners, the retirees, the families. The West Kootenay Advertiser extends the reach: 27,000 homes every Friday across the West Kootenay and Boundary.

Ownership

The Grand Forks Gazette is owned by Black Press. Its lineage: founded 1897 in the mining boom — the year the city incorporated; through a century of local ownership, the paper surviving while rivals like the Grand Forks Sun came and went; to Black Press — the province's community-newspaper chain, the steward of the Boundary's paper.

Digital Presence

The paper publishes online at grandforksgazette.ca (Wikipedia lists grandforksgazette.ca as its website) — the digital edition of the 1897 paper: the Boundary's news, updated for the digital age, carrying 125 years of Grand Forks online. The digital Gazette is the 1897 paper's 21st-century form: the same Boundary, the same mission, the new medium.

As of 2026, the Grand Forks Gazette continues — more than 125 years after the 1897 founding, still publishing Wednesdays from the old brick building on Second Street, still the Boundary's paper, still the Gazette. From the mining boom to the Black Press present, from the hand press to grandforksgazette.ca, it remains what it has always been: Grand Forks' own paper: the Boundary's news, the Boundary's voice, the Boundary's record — yesterday's floods, today's council, tomorrow's harvest, the paper that has been there for all of it, still and always, the Boundary's own, then and now, still.

Note: website left empty in frontmatter per project rule for url-unverified rows; Wikipedia lists grandforksgazette.ca as its website.