About Le Reflet

Le Reflet

Overview

Le Reflet is a free French-language weekly newspaper serving the Roussillon sector of Quebec's Montérégie region, on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River opposite Montreal. Published in tabloid format by Gravité Média, it covers the municipalities of Candiac, Delson, La Prairie, Sainte-Catherine, Saint-Constant, Saint-Philippe and Saint-Mathieu, the communities that make up much of the Roussillon regional county municipality. The paper's publishing city is Candiac, while the title has long been associated with Delson — Transcontinental's 2017 transaction documents, for example, listed it as "Le Reflet, Delson." Founded in 1966, it is one of the older community weeklies still publishing on Montreal's South Shore, and it remains a weekly print product at a time when many comparable Quebec titles have closed or moved online only. Since the end of door-to-door Publisac distribution, the paper has been available free of charge at drop-off points across its territory and in a digital edition published on its website. Its editorial focus is resolutely local: municipal politics, urban development, courts and police news, culture, community life and local sport in the seven municipalities it serves.

History

Le Reflet was founded in 1966 by Léo Robidoux under the name Le Reflet régional. The paper's early decades were spent as a local independent title before it passed, during the 1980s, into the orbit of the Auclair family of South Shore publishers. It first joined Les Hebdos Rive-Sud, the group run by Jean-Paul Auclair, founder of Le Courrier du Sud of Longueuil, and later became part of Les Hebdos Montérégiens, the chain owned by his son Michel Auclair. That family stewardship placed the paper inside what became the dominant community-newspaper group in the Montérégie.

The 2010s brought a rapid succession of owners as Quebec's two press giants fought over the province's weekly market. In February 2011, Québecor, through its Sun Media subsidiary, bought the fifteen publications of Les Hebdos Montérégiens, including Le Reflet. In December 2013, Sun Media sold its Quebec weekly newspapers to its principal rival, TC Media. Transcontinental then decided in 2017 to dispose of its Quebec and Ontario local publications in a series of transactions. In August 2017, the newly created Gravité Média — founded by Julie Voyer, until recently TC Média's general manager for the Montérégie — acquired Le Reflet along with five other South Shore publications: Le Journal Saint-François, Le Soleil de Châteauguay, Le Courrier du Sud, the Brossard Éclair and the business publication L'Information d'affaires d'ici. The sale returned the paper to regional ownership, where it has remained since.

The paper marked its fortieth anniversary in November 2006, an occasion noted in the House of Commons, where the local MP described it as a regional journalistic institution distributing some 38,000 copies a week. Its sixtieth year falls in 2026, and the paper continues to publish on its weekly cycle.

Programming and Content

Le Reflet's editorial mandate is the daily life of the Roussillon municipalities. Its reporting covers municipal councils and local politics, urban development and construction, justice and police matters, cultural events, community and school life, and local sports. Stories are reported at the scale of the seven municipalities in its distribution zone — a city council decision in Saint-Constant, a road project in La Prairie, a community festival in Candiac — rather than at a regional or provincial level, although provincial stories are carried when they bear directly on the territory. Recent editions illustrate the mix: an October 2026 article on the paper's website dealt with a Saint-Constant family's campaign for road-safety reflection following the death of their son, and sports coverage extends to the local junior hockey and running events followed by its readers. The paper publishes in French only, reflecting the overwhelmingly francophone population of its distribution area, and its pages combine staff reporting with municipal notices, community announcements and advertising from local merchants.

Audience and Reach

Le Reflet is distributed free throughout its seven-municipality territory. For most of its life the paper reached readers through the Publisac, the door-to-door advertising package distributed across Quebec. When Publisac distribution ended in the region, the paper, like its Gravité Média sister titles, shifted to a network of drop-off points in businesses and public places, supplemented by its website and digital edition. The paper states that it is available at some 150 drop-off points across its territory, a figure it published in May 2025. Its own website has previously described a weekly distribution of 39,903 copies, a figure the paper published for its market; in 2006, at its fortieth anniversary, its weekly circulation was put at 38,000 copies. No independently audited circulation figure for the current period is published, and the figures above are the paper's own. The territory it serves — the Roussillon MRC communities of Candiac, Delson, La Prairie, Sainte-Catherine, Saint-Constant, Saint-Philippe and Saint-Mathieu — is a fast-growing suburban belt on Montreal's South Shore, and the paper's readership is drawn from households across those municipalities.

Digital Presence

The paper's website, lereflet.qc.ca, publishes its reporting on a rolling basis between weekly print editions, carries the paper's digital replica edition, and provides practical information such as the locations of its print drop-off points. The replica edition is also distributed through the Flipsnack platform under the publisher's account — the edition dated 16 September 2026 was posted there on 15 September 2026 — confirming the paper's continued weekly print cycle into the autumn of 2026. The site's articles are indexed by regional media-monitoring services; Culture Montérégie's press review of 9 October 2026, for example, cites a Le Reflet article published on its website that week. Since August 2026, the paper's masthead has also carried the Gravité INFO branding introduced by its publisher to tie its titles together visibly, while the paper keeps its own name and territorial identity. Its parent company operates shared digital properties, including the Gravité INFO regional news brand — formerly the social-media brand Ma vie ma région — and a regional current-affairs podcast, which draw on the newsrooms of the group's newspapers.

Ownership and Organisation

Le Reflet is owned and published by Gravité Média, a regional media company based in the Montérégie that was founded in 2017 by Julie Voyer, who serves as its president and chief executive. Voyer, previously TC Média's general manager for the Montérégie, created the company to acquire six South Shore publications from TC Media in August 2017. The group today publishes five community newspapers — Le Reflet, Le Courrier du Sud of Longueuil, La Relève of Boucherville (acquired in 2023), Le Soleil de Châteauguay and Le Journal Saint-François of Salaberry-de-Valleyfield — together with the online business publication L'Information d'affaires d'ici. The papers share the publisher's production, sales and digital infrastructure while maintaining their own local editorial identities. In August 2026, the company reorganised its public branding into four strands — Gravité INFO for news, Gravité MAV for lifestyle content, a Gravité INFO podcast, and the five newspapers themselves — with each paper adding the Gravité INFO mark to its masthead. The paper's reporting team works from Candiac, its publishing city, covering the Roussillon territory.

Contact and Availability

Le Reflet is published weekly in Candiac and is available free of charge at approximately 150 drop-off points in Candiac, Delson, La Prairie, Sainte-Catherine, Saint-Constant, Saint-Philippe and Saint-Mathieu, as listed on its website, lereflet.qc.ca. The current edition and the paper's ongoing reporting can be read on the website, where the digital replica of the print edition is also posted. Readers and advertisers deal with the paper through its website and through its publisher, Gravité Média, whose regional office serves all five of the group's South Shore newspapers.