About MuskokaRegion.com

MuskokaRegion.com

Overview

MuskokaRegion.com is the digital news outlet for the District Municipality of Muskoka, Ontario, published by Metroland Media Group, the community-news arm of Torstar Corporation. It is the successor to Muskoka's historic community newspapers — the Bracebridge Examiner, the Huntsville Forester, the Gravenhurst Banner and The Muskokan — whose journalism was consolidated first into a shared regional print weekly and then, after Metroland ended its community print editions in September 2023, into this single website. The outlet covers Muskoka's six municipalities, including the towns of Bracebridge, Huntsville and Gravenhurst and the townships of Lake of Bays, Muskoka Lakes and Georgian Bay, reporting on district and town councils, development and waterfront issues, policing, courts, schools, health care, the tourism economy and community life in one of Canada's best-known cottage-country regions. Unusually, the outlet's digital name came first in print: the consolidated weekly that preceded the website's solo existence was itself styled "Muskoka Region" and later "MuskokaRegion.com" on its masthead, so the print newspaper carried the website's name before print ended altogether.

History

Newspaper publishing in Muskoka reaches back to the settlement era. Bracebridge's lineage, as recorded in the Bracebridge Public Library's microfilm holdings, runs from the Northern Advocate (issues from 1869–70 survive) through the Muskoka Herald (1888–1955) and the Bracebridge Gazette (1903–1956), which merged as the Herald-Gazette (1957–1996) before the Bracebridge Examiner name took over in 1996. The Examiner continued, in the library's records, until 2017.

Huntsville's paper has the deepest documented history of the group. According to the history the Forester itself published, it grew out of an earlier sheet called The Liberal, and the first issue of The Forester appeared in October 1877 under Dr. Howland and printer F. W. Clearwater. Clearwater became sole proprietor; when fire destroyed much of Huntsville in 1894, the Forester's plant burned with it, yet the paper was publishing again within two weeks. In 1899 H. E. Rice bought into the paper with George Hutcheson Sr., beginning the Rice family's stewardship, which lasted more than 125 years — Elizabeth Rice became publisher in 1991. The Gravenhurst Banner served the district's southern town.

The independent era ended in 2005. As a Forester editorial of October 5, 2005 recorded, Metroland had bought the Bracebridge Examiner and the Gravenhurst Banner the previous spring, and the Forester's sale to Metroland was announced that same week, ending the Rice family's ownership after more than a century; long-time advertising manager Bill Allen became general manager under the new owners. Under Metroland the papers were progressively consolidated into a single Muskoka-wide weekly, published as Muskoka Region and then under the MuskokaRegion.com name, while reporting continued to be filed from the district's towns. The legacy branding faded slowly rather than at once: as late as January 2021, stories published on the shared website were still being cited by regional organizations under the Bracebridge Examiner name, reflecting the period in which the town titles survived as community identities within the regional site. On September 15, 2023, Metroland filed for protection under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and ceased printing all of its Ontario community newspapers; the Muskoka title became digital-only, and has published at muskokaregion.com ever since.

Programming and Content

MuskokaRegion.com publishes daily news across the district: District of Muskoka and town council decisions, budgets and services — the site covered the debate over the District's 2026 budget and its projected tax increase — planning and development disputes, short-term rental and waterfront issues, Ontario Provincial Police news, courts, school boards, the Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare hospital file, roads and winter weather, local business, sport and an active community-announcements and events stream. Its reporters cover the texture of small-town and seasonal life as well as hard news: on September 15, 2026, for example, the site published "No Quorum, No Future: Huntsville Good Food Co-op teeters on brink of collapse," a reported feature by Rebecca Hudescu, identified as a Local Journalism Initiative reporter with muskokaregion.com — evidence both of the outlet's current original reporting and of its participation in the federal Local Journalism Initiative, which funds reporters in underserved communities. The outlet also runs the Muskoka Readers' Choice Awards, its community-voted business awards program; the Gravenhurst Chamber of Commerce's August 11, 2026 newsletter promoted the 2026 awards, with voting closing August 21 and finalists revealed October 5. Bylined staff coverage on the site in recent years has included reporters such as Alison Brownlee and Kevin Trimble, whose MuskokaRegion.com stories from December 2020 and January 2021 are cited in regional climate-action reporting.

Audience and Reach

The outlet serves the District of Muskoka, a region of permanent small towns and villages whose population swells substantially in summer, when seasonal residents and visitors arrive at the lakes that made Muskoka famous as cottage country. That dual audience shapes the journalism: council, school and health-care coverage serves year-round residents, while development, environment, tourism and waterfront coverage serves the seasonal community as well. In the print era the consolidated weekly was delivered across the district; since September 2023 the audience is reached digitally through the website, search and social channels. The Readers' Choice Awards program is a deliberate audience-engagement mechanism, drawing voting participation from across the district's communities each year, including in 2026.

Digital Presence

Muskokaregion.com is the outlet's only edition. It follows the Metroland digital format used across Torstar's community network: a continuously updated news feed, community sections for the district's towns, sports, lifestyle and obituary content, photo galleries, and community awards and contests. The site sits within Metroland's northern Ontario digital cluster, cross-reading with neighbouring regional outlets in the same network, such as ParrySound.com to the north. The legacy titles' names — Bracebridge Examiner, Huntsville Forester, Gravenhurst Banner — survive as part of the site's heritage rather than as separate publications, and the former papers' standalone web presences route to the regional site. Historical runs of the predecessor papers are preserved locally, notably the Bracebridge Public Library's microfilm sequence documenting the town's newspaper lineage from 1869 onward, and the Huntsville Forester's own published history of its 1877 founding and Rice-family era.

Ownership and Organisation

MuskokaRegion.com is published by Metroland Media Group Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Torstar Corporation. Metroland was formed in February 1981 through the merger of Metrospan Community Newspapers and Inland Publishing, combined with CityMedia Group in September 2006, and came under new ultimate ownership in 2020 when NordStar Capital LP, owned by Jordan Bitove and Paul Rivett, acquired Torstar in a deal valued at $52 million. Metroland's head office is at 3715 Laird Road in Mississauga. The Muskoka consolidation was a two-step process: acquisition of the independent Bracebridge, Huntsville and Gravenhurst papers in 2005, then gradual merger into a single regional newsroom and brand. The September 2023 Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act filing ended the print edition along with those of Metroland's other Ontario community weeklies, with roughly 605 jobs cut company-wide; the digital newsroom in Muskoka continues, supported in part by a Local Journalism Initiative reporting position, and Metroland also received more than $3.2 million in Online News Act payments from Google, according to Masthead Online.

Contact and Availability

MuskokaRegion.com is available free of charge at www.muskokaregion.com, updated daily, and readers can reach the newsroom through the website's contact and news-tip facilities; no public business email address is published for the outlet. The outlet's reporting is based in Bracebridge, the district's administrative centre, with coverage across Bracebridge, Huntsville, Gravenhurst and Muskoka's township municipalities. Metroland Media Group's head office is in Mississauga, Ontario.