About North Bay Nugget

North Bay Nugget

The North Bay Nugget is a daily newspaper published in North Bay, Ontario, serving the city and the surrounding districts of Northeastern Ontario. Launched in 1907 as the Cobalt Nugget during the great Cobalt silver boom — then moved to North Bay in 1921 and carried on as the Nugget — the paper has published for nearly 120 years through the silver rush, the railway era, the Cold War air-base years and the modern North. Owned by Postmedia Network. Wikipedia lists nugget.ca as its website. On September 29, 2026, Postmedia announced that the Nugget would end print publication — its last printed edition in late October 2026 — transitioning to an online-only publication under its local brand.

Overview

North Bay — a city of about 52,000 on the shores of Lake Nipissing, where Ontario's Near North meets the Far North — is a transportation and institutional hub: the Ontario Northland Railway, the former NORAD air base, Nipissing University, Canadore College, the regional hospital and the gateway to the Temiskaming and Nipissing districts. The North Bay Nugget is its daily newspaper: the newsroom covers North Bay city council, the surrounding municipalities, the courts, health care, education, the military legacy, the railway, mining services and the region's francophone and Indigenous communities.

The paper's distinction is its origin story: born in the legendary Cobalt silver camp — the richest silver discovery in Canadian history, which drew tens of thousands of prospectors and produced one of the wildest boomtowns in the country's past — and then transplanted to North Bay when the boom faded. And its scoop of the century: the 1938 exposure of Grey Owl as the English-born Archibald Belaney, a story the Nugget had held for three years, which exploded into worldwide press coverage.

History

The paper was launched in 1907 as the Cobalt Nugget, during the silver boom at Cobalt, Ontario — the camp that had erupted after the 1903 silver discovery along the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway. It was acquired within months by businessmen Harry Browning and W.G. Ferguson. Initially a weekly, it expanded into a daily in 1909, and Browning became a founding member of Canadian Press when that cooperative was founded in 1917 — placing the little northern paper at the heart of the national news system.

When the Cobalt boom ended, Browning moved the paper to North Bay in 1921; he sold it in 1922 to W.E. Mason, the owner of the Sudbury Star, and moved to Sudbury himself in 1927 to become managing editor of the Star. Under Mason the Nugget produced its most famous story. In 1935 the newspaper received compelling evidence that the celebrated conservationist Grey Owl — who passed as half-Indigenous, claiming to be the son of a Scottish man and an Apache woman — was in fact an English-born immigrant named Archibald Stansfeld Belaney with no Indigenous ancestry. Mason ordered the story held for the remainder of Grey Owl's life, out of respect for his conservation work. When the paper published it immediately after Grey Owl's death in 1938, the deception received worldwide press coverage — one of the great media unmaskings of the twentieth century, and the Nugget's defining scoop.

Mason remained the Nugget's owner until his death in 1948, after which an employee buyout purchased the paper from his estate — a rare chapter of worker ownership in Canadian press history. Southam Newspapers acquired it in 1956. When Southam acquired the Thomson chain in 1996, the Nugget and the Sudbury Star were reunited under common ownership for the first time since 1927. Both papers were sold to Osprey Media in 2001, to Sun Media in 2007, and to Postmedia in 2015.

On September 29, 2026, Postmedia announced that the North Bay Nugget and several other Ontario papers would no longer be printed, transitioning to online-only publications; the Nugget's last printed edition was published in late October 2026, ending more than a century of print in the city.

Content and Sections

The modern Nugget is built around the Near North. North Bay city council anchors the news pages — the paper covers the mayor and council with a dedicated city-hall bureau — extending to the surrounding municipalities of the Nipissing and Parry Sound districts. The courts beat covers the region's legal community; health reporting follows the North Bay Regional Health Centre; education coverage spans the school boards, Nipissing University and Canadore College.

The railway receives sustained attention reflecting the Ontario Northland's deep presence in the city's economy and identity — the paper's coverage of the ONR's battles for contracts and survival has repeatedly made provincial news. Mining services, the military legacy (the former CFB North Bay and its NORAD history) and the region's tourism and cottage economy are covered in depth. Indigenous affairs reporting covers the Nipissing First Nation and the region's urban Indigenous community; the francophone community — one of the North's largest — is covered extensively. Sports coverage centres on the OHL's North Bay Battalion, the Nipissing Lakers university athletics and the region's deep hockey culture. Opinion pages carry editorials, columns and letters from across the Near North, and feature sections cover arts, food, homes, health and community life.

Coverage and Audience

The Nugget serves North Bay and the surrounding districts — a market of roughly 80,000 people across the city, the Nipissing district and the Near North. Its audience is the region's railway workers, health-care professionals, educators, military families, public servants, miners and the cottage-country community.

Weekly circulation was reported at 106,807 as of 2013; the paper published Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday in print, with daily digital coverage. The paper's political coverage carries weight at Queen's Park — North Bay's ridings are closely watched, and the Nugget's reporting on the Ontario Northland, the hospital and the university is routinely cited provincially. Its archives, reaching back to 1907 (with 713,246 searchable pages from 1909–2014 in the Newspapers.com archive), document the silver boom, the railway age and the making of the Near North.

Ownership

The North Bay Nugget is owned by Postmedia Network Inc., Canada's largest newspaper chain, which acquired it in 2015 as part of its purchase of Sun Media from Quebecor. Within Postmedia, the paper shares national content, digital platforms and corporate services with the chain's other papers while maintaining its North Bay newsroom and editorial identity.

Postmedia itself is publicly traded and majority-owned by the U.S. investment firm Chatham Asset Management. The paper's lineage — from the Cobalt silver camp through Harry Browning, W.E. Mason, the employee buyout, Southam and Osprey to Postmedia — connects the boomtown press to the digital age.

Digital Presence

The paper's digital edition (Wikipedia lists nugget.ca as its website) carries the Nugget's daily journalism online: breaking news, e-edition access, newsletters, photo galleries and community features, serving readers across the Near North and the region's diaspora. The site operates on Postmedia's shared digital infrastructure, offering digital subscriptions and e-editions.

On social media the paper distributes breaking news and community stories to a following concentrated in the North Bay region. As of 2026 — with print ended in October and the digital edition continuing under the Nugget's brand — the North Bay Nugget remains the daily paper of record for the Near North, nearly 120 years after its founding in the Cobalt silver camp.

Note: website left empty in frontmatter per project rule for url-unverified rows; Wikipedia lists nugget.ca as the paper's website.