About Le Granby Express

Le Granby Express

Overview

Le Granby Express is a French-language weekly newspaper serving Granby and the Haute-Yamaska area of Quebec's Montérégie region, published by the independent regional press group Icimédias. It is distributed free of charge through a network of drop points: Icimédias' current publisher figures credit the paper with 13,865 copies distributed each week through 129 drop points across its territory, which comprises Granby, Saint-Alphonse-de-Granby, Roxton Pond, Saint-Joachim-de-Shefford, Sainte-Cécile-de-Milton, Shefford and Waterloo, a territory the publisher puts at 92,796 residents. Its website, granbyexpress.com, publishes local news continuously between print editions.

The paper was launched in 2011 by Sun Media, the community-newspaper arm of Quebecor Media, as part of that group's expansion into southern Quebec weekly markets. It later passed to TC Media and, in November 2017, was among the 21 publications TC Media sold to the newly formed Icimédias, under which it still publishes today. Granby is also home to La Voix de l'Est, a French-language daily founded in 1935; the Express is the city's free weekly companion in a market that, unusually for a Quebec city of its size, supports both a daily and a weekly.

Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) catalogues the Granby Express from 2011 to the present, and its journalists' bylined local reporting — on municipal labour relations, the Cégep de Granby, community events and regional festivals — appears continuously through 2025 and into the current publishing year.

History

The Granby Express was born of a competitive push. In February 2011, Sun Media absorbed the 15 titles of the Hebdos Montérégiens group, and reporting by the Canadian Journalism Foundation at the time described Quebecor Media preparing to launch two new weeklies, in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and Granby, and recruiting multiplatform journalists and freelancers for them through advertisements in the Journal de Montréal. In Granby, the new Sun Media weekly entered a market already served by La Voix de l'Est, the regional daily, and by L'Express, the established weekly of the independent Groupe Le Canada Français.

The new paper's first corporate transition came quickly. In December 2013, Sun Media sold its Quebec community newspapers to Transcontinental's TC Media, and the Granby Express became a TC Media title. When the Competition Bureau's conditions on that transaction forced TC Media to rationalize overlapping weeklies in 2014, the Granby Express was among the titles retained: Transcontinental's September 3, 2014 announcement of the sale-process results lists it among the Montérégie papers that would remain in publication, even as four other Express-branded titles — Châteauguay Express, Roussillon Express, Valleyfield Express and L'Écho de Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu — ceased publishing.

On November 8, 2017, TC Media announced the sale of 21 of its publications, the Granby Express among them, to Icimédias Inc., a company led by president Renel Bouchard with Marc-Noël Ouellette as managing director. In total, 140 employees of the publications and 28 production employees transferred to Icimédias, and TC Transcontinental signed a multi-year agreement to keep printing and distributing the papers. The transaction was the largest in TC Media's divestiture of its Quebec and Ontario local newspapers, and Icimédias' own corporate history records that with the November 2017 purchase it became the largest weekly press group in Quebec. The Granby Express has remained an Icimédias title since.

Programming and Content

The Granby Express is a general-interest community weekly covering the city of Granby and the surrounding Haute-Yamaska municipalities. Its reporting spans municipal politics and labour relations, education, economic development, community life, culture and sport. Its autumn 2025 coverage, by staff journalist Tristan Côté among others, included the fall term opening at the Cégep de Granby, where more than 2,200 students began the session amid new student housing and a new interregional bus circuit; a labour dispute between the City of Granby and its white-collar employees; the official opening of Parc Langevin in Saint-Alphonse-de-Granby; and the region's Folies gourmandes food festival in downtown Granby. The paper also covers events such as the Salon du livre de Granby book fair, where its journalist Pierre Michaud reported in May 2025.

Two recurring features tie the paper to local institutions. Since 2022, the City of Granby's archives division has published a monthly history page, "Une page d'histoire," in the Granby Express on the first Wednesday of each month, a partnership between the city, the paper and the Société d'histoire de la Haute-Yamaska that recounts episodes of Granby's municipal history. Commerce Tourisme Granby région, the regional tourism and commerce body, also publishes a series of business portraits, "Portrait de notre histoire commerciale," in partnership with the paper, profiling long-established local entrepreneurs.

Audience and Reach

The Express's territory covers the city of Granby — one of the principal cities of the Montérégie, east of Montreal — and six surrounding municipalities in and around the Haute-Yamaska regional county municipality: Saint-Alphonse-de-Granby, Roxton Pond, Saint-Joachim-de-Shefford, Sainte-Cécile-de-Milton, Shefford and Waterloo. Icimédias puts the territory's population at 92,796.

The reach figures published by Icimédias for advertisers are the publisher's own and are presented as such: 13,865 copies distributed weekly through 129 drop points; 72,497 monthly unique visitors to the online platform; and 83,124 monthly page views. The publisher's readership profile for the paper describes a readership split evenly between men and women, half of it aged 28 to 57, and claims 91 percent of readers are business decision-makers — marketing figures supplied by the publisher rather than independently audited measurements. No audited circulation figure for the paper is published.

Digital Presence

The paper's digital home is granbyexpress.com, where its newsroom publishes local news, opinion and community coverage between weekly print editions; Icimédias' figures credit the platform with more than 72,000 unique visitors a month. BAnQ preserves the paper's output in both its forms: its newspaper catalogue lists the Granby Express from 2011 to the present in the Eureka database, and "Granby Express.com" from 2017 to 2025 among the titles deposited in BAnQ numérique. The paper also maintains a social-media presence, and readers can find it through Icimédias' site, which links to each of the group's 23 local newspapers. Within Icimédias, the Express is offered to advertisers as part of a combined print, digital and events platform, alongside services such as newsletters, web banners and special sections.

Ownership and Organisation

The Granby Express is published by Icimédias Inc., an independent Quebec press group headquartered in the province's regions rather than in Montreal. Icimédias was created in November 2017 when Renel Bouchard and Marc-Noël Ouellette acquired 21 TC Media publications across the Centre-du-Québec, Chaudière-Appalaches, Estrie, Mauricie and Montérégie regions; in Montérégie the transaction brought Icimédias the Granby Express together with L'Avenir et des Rivières, Journal Le Guide, Le Canada Français, Le Richelieu and Coup d'œil. The group has since grown, acquiring Cornwall's Seaway News in 2019 and L'Écho de Frontenac in 2024 and launching Sherbrooke.info the same year, and it now presents itself as grouping 23 local newspapers and multimedia platforms in six regions — describing itself as the largest independent press group in Quebec.

Icimédias' corporate history also records a generational transition: in 2022, Mélanie Medeiros and Stéphane Legrand became shareholders and vice-presidents of the company. The Granby Express's newsroom is local to Granby, with staff journalists producing its reporting; printing and distribution were originally continued by TC Transcontinental under the multi-year agreement concluded at the 2017 sale.

Contact and Availability

The Granby Express print edition is distributed free each week at 129 drop points across Granby, Saint-Alphonse-de-Granby, Roxton Pond, Saint-Joachim-de-Shefford, Sainte-Cécile-de-Milton, Shefford and Waterloo, and the publisher's website maintains a tool for finding the nearest drop point. The paper's news and features are available at any time at granbyexpress.com. Readers and advertisers wishing to reach the paper can contact Icimédias' local sales and editorial team through the contact form on the Granby Express page of icimedias.ca, where the group directs inquiries to its local representatives for each of its newspapers.