About The Manitoulin Expositor

The Manitoulin Expositor

The Manitoulin Expositor is a weekly newspaper published in Little Current, Ontario — Northern Ontario's oldest continuously published newspaper, founded in 1879 by William Loe Smith and still serving the communities of Manitoulin Island and the Lake Huron North Shore. Independently owned by the Manitoulin Publishing Company under publisher emeritus Rick McCutcheon and publisher Alicia McCutcheon, the Expositor is nationally renowned for winning the 1982 Michener Award for public service journalism — the first community newspaper ever to do so — for its investigation into the island's suicide crisis, reporting that led directly to the creation of a community suicide-prevention hotline.

Overview

The Manitoulin Expositor is published weekly from offices at 1 Manitowaning Road in Little Current, Ontario, the island's main commercial centre at its eastern end. It serves the residents of Manitoulin Island — the world's largest freshwater island, in the Canadian waters of Lake Huron — along with the surrounding North Shore communities. The paper covers local news, sports, community events, obituaries, and opinion, and carries weekly classifieds, real-estate listings, editorial columns, and letters to the editor.

The Expositor is a family-owned independent in an era of chain consolidation: it is published by the Manitoulin Publishing Company Ltd., owned since 1970 by Rick McCutcheon, the longest-tenured owner in the paper's history. McCutcheon, who joined the paper as editor in 1968, is now publisher emeritus and semi-retired; day-to-day operations as editor and publisher are handled by his daughter Alicia McCutcheon, with Tom Sasvari as editor-in-chief. The paper's independence — it is not part of any chain's stable of dozens of titles — has been widely credited for its survival and its editorial character.

Manitoulin Island has a population of about 13,000, roughly half of whom are members of First Nations communities — the island includes the Wiikwemkoong Unceded Reserve and several other First Nations. The Expositor's circulation is about 6,000 in summer, dropping to about 5,000 in winter, deep penetration of a small market. The paper's readership spans the island's Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, its seasonal cottagers, and the Manitoulin diaspora.

History

The Manitoulin Expositor was launched in 1879 by editor William Loe Smith, making it the oldest still-extant newspaper in the Northern Ontario region. The island it serves was itself in the early decades of non-Indigenous settlement: Manitoulin had been set aside under the 1862 Manitoulin Island Treaty, and the 1870s and 1880s saw the growth of Little Current, Gore Bay, and the island's farming and fishing villages. The Expositor chronicled that settlement era and every decade since — the steamboat and railway years, the Depression, the postwar tourism boom, the Indigenous political resurgence of recent decades.

In 1970, the paper was acquired by Rick McCutcheon, who had joined as editor in 1968 after answering a newspaper advertisement for a reporter at the Gore Bay Recorder — the island's competing paper, where his career had begun in 1967. McCutcheon bought the Expositor just two years after arriving as editor, and he has owned it ever since: more than five decades, the longest ownership tenure in the paper's 140-plus-year history. In 2020, his service to the industry was recognized with induction into the Ontario Community Newspapers Association's Hall of Fame, following the association's J. Earl Morrison Award in 1983 and a Gold Quill Award in 2017 for more than 50 years of dedication to the newspaper industry.

In 2001 (the paper's own accounts date the Gore Bay Recorder purchase to the spring of 2000), McCutcheon acquired the formerly competing Manitoulin West Recorder in Gore Bay, reuniting the two papers under one independent owner. Both titles continue to operate: the Expositor covering most of the island, the Recorder serving the western end with a circulation of about 1,500.

The paper's defining journalistic moment came in 1982, when the Manitoulin Expositor won the Michener Award for public service journalism — the first community newspaper ever to receive Canada's premier honour for public-service reporting. The award recognized the paper's sustained investigation into the island's suicide rate, which the Expositor had covered for a decade and estimated in 1981 was running at about 20 per thousand — roughly twice the national rate. The paper's constant stream of reporting, information, and opinion stirred the community to concerted action, leading to the establishment of a 24-hour telephone link to a Sudbury Telecare system — a community-operated suicide prevention hotline that, in its first weeks, was credited with saving lives. The Michener Award citation stands as the Expositor's proudest distinction and a landmark in Canadian community journalism.

Content and Coverage

The Expositor's front page typically leads with the issues that matter most to island life: drinking-water crises in First Nations communities, the future of the swing bridge that connects the island to the mainland at Little Current, industrial and development proposals, and the decisions of the island's municipal councils and First Nations band councils. The paper covers the full range of a community weekly — municipal government, education, health care, policing and courts, business, agriculture and fisheries, sports, arts, and community events — with a particular attentiveness to the island's Indigenous communities and their issues.

The paper's masthead carries its motto — "who dares not offend, cannot be honest" — a declaration of editorial independence that reflects the McCutcheon era's approach: a willingness to take on difficult subjects, from the suicide crisis of the early 1980s to the land, governance, and environmental questions that run through contemporary island politics. The Expositor publishes on the traditional territories of the Anishinaabek of Mnidoo Mnising (Manitoulin Island), and its coverage treats the island's First Nations not as a beat but as central to the community the paper serves.

The paper employs a network of correspondents across the island's communities — Silver Water, Kagawong, Barrie Island, Meldrum Bay, Providence Bay, Tehkummah, and others — alongside staff writers and specialist columnists covering sports, biography, literature, culinary subjects, agriculture, arts, history, entomology, and veterinary topics. That breadth of contributors, unusual for a paper of its size, reflects the Expositor's role as the island's forum: the place where Manitoulin's many communities talk to each other.

Obituaries, milestones, letters to the editor, and community announcements remain central to the paper, as they are to every successful community weekly. The Expositor's letters page is famously lively — the island's public square in print.

Coverage and Audience

The Expositor serves the year-round residents of Manitoulin Island and the North Shore — a population of about 13,000 on the island itself, roughly half Indigenous — plus seasonal cottagers, tourists, and the island's diaspora across Canada. Its circulation of 5,000 to 6,000 represents extraordinary market penetration: in a community the size of a small town, the paper reaches a large share of households.

The audience is distinctive: a mix of Anishinaabe community members on the island's First Nations, farming and fishing families, tourism operators, retirees, and cottagers from southern Ontario. The paper's bilingual reality — covering communities where Anishinaabemowin and English both live — and its attention to treaty, land, and governance issues give it a depth of Indigenous coverage rare in the community press.

The Expositor's independence is part of its appeal to readers. In a 2019 profile, McCutcheon attributed the paper's survival to being independent rather than one of fifty titles in a corporate stable — a "mom and pop" operation accountable to its community rather than distant shareholders. That independence has allowed the paper to maintain staffing and local reporting while chain-owned papers across Ontario have been hollowed out.

Ownership

The Manitoulin Expositor is owned by the Manitoulin Publishing Company Ltd., controlled by Rick McCutcheon since 1970. McCutcheon remains publisher emeritus; his daughter Alicia McCutcheon is publisher, and Tom Sasvari is editor-in-chief, with Michael Erskine as associate editor. The family ownership — father to daughter — has provided the continuity that has kept the paper independent through the consolidation of the Canadian newspaper industry.

The company's holdings include the Manitoulin West Recorder in Gore Bay, the island's western paper, operated largely by editor Tom Sasvari. The two-paper structure gives the island something almost no comparable Canadian community has: two locally owned newspapers serving a population of 13,000.

Digital Presence

The Expositor publishes online at manitoulin.com, where the weekly print edition is extended with digital news, an electronic edition for subscribers, classifieds, and event listings. The website serves the island's dispersed readership — including cottagers and former residents who follow island news from afar — and the digital edition offers the same content as print through a web interface.

The paper maintains the subscription model that has sustained it in print: annual subscriptions with zone pricing for Manitoulin Island, off-island, and digital-only readers, plus newsstand sales. In an era when many community papers have abandoned print or paywalls, the Expositor's continued investment in both reflects the economics of a deeply loyal readership and an owner willing to bet on local journalism.

For Manitoulin Island, the Expositor remains what it has been since 1879: the island's newspaper of record, its forum, and its memory — the weekly chronicle of the world's largest freshwater island, still independently owned, still publishing from Little Current, still daring not to offend.