About Maandblad de Krant

Maandblad de Krant

Maandblad de Krant — known to its readers simply as De Krant, Dutch for "the Newspaper" — is a monthly magazine serving Dutch immigrants in Canada and the United States. Published in tabloid newspaper format, it is the only North American publication that caters specifically to the Dutch immigrant community, and the only publication on the continent that publishes original material in the West Frisian language. Since April 2008 it has been published by Mokeham Publishing Inc., which relocated the operation from Penticton, British Columbia to Oakville, Ontario in 2013. With roots going back to 1969, when it first appeared as De Hollandse Krant, the magazine has chronicled more than five decades of Dutch immigrant life in North America.

Overview

De Krant occupies a unique niche in North American ethnic publishing. While many immigrant communities support newspapers in their own languages, the Dutch diaspora in Canada and the United States is served by just one publication — this one. Printed in Dutch in a tabloid format, the monthly magazine combines news related to the Netherlands with personal columns, editorials, letters, and advertising aimed at Dutch immigrants and their families. Its readership spans the continent, with approximately 6,000 subscribers across North America and its largest concentrations in Ontario and British Columbia, at about 1,500 subscribers each.

The magazine's most distinctive editorial feature is its monthly column in West Frisian, covering a quarter page of each issue. West Frisian is a minority language spoken in the Dutch province of Friesland, and De Krant's Frisian column makes it the only publication in North America publishing original material in the language — a remarkable commitment for a small-circulation ethnic magazine.

History

De Hollandse Krant first appeared in 1969, founded to serve the Dutch immigrants who had settled in Canada and the United States in the great post-war wave of Dutch emigration. The Netherlands experienced substantial emigration in the decades after the Second World War, and Canada was among the principal destinations: tens of thousands of Dutch families crossed the Atlantic in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, many settling on farms in Ontario, the Prairies, and British Columbia, or in the growing suburbs of Toronto, Vancouver, and other cities. An immigrant press in their own language was a natural institution for a community maintaining its cultural ties while building new lives.

In its early decades the paper was published by the Timmer Publishing Company in Langley, British Columbia, in the Fraser Valley — a region with a strong Dutch-Canadian presence, where post-war immigrants had taken up farming and built some of the province's most productive agricultural communities. Publishing from within one of the community's heartlands gave the paper direct access to its readers' daily lives: the farms, churches, and businesses that sustained Dutch-Canadian identity in the valley. In April 2008, publication passed to Mokeham Publishing Inc., initially based in Penticton, British Columbia, in the Okanagan Valley. In 2013, the publishing firm relocated to Oakville, Ontario, placing the magazine in the heart of the country's largest Dutch-Canadian population centre. Through these moves, the publication's name evolved from De Hollandse Krant to Maandblad de Krant, though readers continued to call it De Krant. The 2018 absorption of De Nederlandse Courant brought the magazine the readership of a paper that had relayed Dutch news from De Telegraaf alongside coverage of the institutions serving aging Dutch-Canadians — luncheon clubs, veterans' associations, and card clubs — underscoring how De Krant's audience centres on the post-war immigrant generation and its descendants.

The magazine's endurance across more than five decades is notable. Ethnic publications often fade as immigrant generations age and their children assimilate into English-language media. De Krant has survived by serving not only the original post-war immigrants but their children and grandchildren, along with newer Dutch arrivals, maintaining a continuous conversation in Dutch across generations of North American life. Its position was further consolidated in 2018, when De Nederlandse Courant — published since 1953 as Canada's oldest Dutch newspaper — folded and was co-opted into Maandblad de Krant, leaving De Krant as the only remaining Dutch-language periodical in North America.

Content

De Krant brings its readers a selection of news stories related to the Netherlands, keeping the diaspora connected to developments in the old country. But the magazine's main focus is the publication of personal columns and editorials by Dutch immigrants to Canada and the United States — first-person writing about immigrant life, memory, identity, and the experience of living between two cultures. Its contributors have included the editor, Tom Bijvoet, alongside columnists Lia Wolters from Toronto, Ontario; Henny Campbell from Ottawa, Ontario; Stefanie Prins from British Columbia; Aubrey Beauchamp from San Clemente, California; and Herman Thorbecke from Georgia — a roster spanning both countries the magazine serves.

In addition to news and columns, De Krant publishes letters to the editor, giving readers a forum for debate and community discussion, and carries advertisements for ethnic Dutch businesses in North America — the bakeries, import shops, travel agencies, and service providers that form the commercial infrastructure of the diaspora. The West Frisian column, a quarter page each month, serves the Frisian-speaking minority within the Dutch immigrant community, preserving a linguistic heritage that has few other outlets anywhere outside the Netherlands.

Coverage and Audience

De Krant's audience is the Dutch immigrant community of Canada and the United States — a dispersed readership united by language and origin rather than by geography. Its approximately 6,000 subscribers are spread across North America, with the heaviest concentrations in Ontario and British Columbia, the two provinces with the largest Dutch-Canadian populations. Beyond subscriptions, the paper is sold in a small number of "Dutch Stores" — grocery stores catering to the Dutch immigrant community — in Western Canada, Ontario, Texas, California, and Oregon, reaching casual readers and shoppers who encounter it alongside imported Dutch foods.

The magazine's coverage bridges two continents: news from the Netherlands on one side, and the lived experience of Dutch immigrants in North America on the other. For elderly readers who emigrated in the post-war decades, it is a lifeline to the language and a record of a community's history; for younger readers, it is a connection to heritage.

Ownership

Since April 2008, Maandblad de Krant has been published by Mokeham Publishing Inc. The firm was initially based in Penticton, British Columbia, and relocated to Oakville, Ontario in 2013. Before Mokeham, the publication was produced by the Timmer Publishing Company in Langley, British Columbia. The editor is Tom Bijvoet. The magazine operates as an independent ethnic-press enterprise, sustained by subscriptions and advertising from Dutch-Canadian and Dutch-American businesses rather than by chain ownership or institutional subsidy. Mokeham has also ventured into English-language publishing about the Netherlands: in August 2011 it launched Dutch, the magazine, a bi-monthly English-language magazine covering Dutch society, politics, culture, history, food, and travel, with an initial circulation of 2,500 in Canada and the United States.

Digital Presence

Wikipedia lists www.dekrant.biz as the magazine's website. The magazine remains fundamentally a print publication, distributed by mail subscription and sold through Dutch specialty stores across Canada and the United States. Its presence is physical — in mailboxes and on the counters of Dutch grocery stores — rather than digital-first, reflecting both the demographics of its core readership and the economics of a small-circulation ethnic monthly.