About Rocky Mountain Goat

Rocky Mountain Goat

Overview

The Rocky Mountain Goat is a weekly community newspaper based in Valemount, British Columbia, serving the Robson Valley in the province's north-central interior. Published on Thursdays in print and online, the Goat covers the Village of Valemount, the Village of McBride, and the smaller valley communities of Dunster and Tête Jaune Cache, and to a lesser extent Blue River and Jasper, Alberta, just across the provincial border. It describes itself on its front page as "your weekly source of news, views and entertainment," and its reporting concentrates on hard news, business news, community life and outdoor adventure in a mountain region defined by Mount Robson, the Fraser River headwaters and the Yellowhead Highway corridor.

Valemount is a village of just over one thousand people — 1,052 residents in the 2021 census — and the Goat is one of two locally owned newspapers based there, alongside the biweekly Valley Sentinel. In a valley where the nearest daily newspaper is hours away, the Goat functions as the paper of record for municipal councils, the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George, school and health matters, wildfire and emergency events, and the outdoor recreation economy on which the region depends.

History

The Goat's own front page in August 2023 carried Volume 14, Issue 28, which places the paper's start at the end of the 2000s; it has published continuously since then as the Robson Valley's weekly. Its name is drawn from the Rocky Mountain goat, the sure-footed alpine ungulate native to the ranges that surround the valley, and the animal serves as the paper's emblem and identity.

The paper quickly established a reputation beyond its small market. In 2015 it was named the top newspaper in its circulation category by the BC Yukon Community Newspapers Association. Its journalism has continued to draw provincial and national recognition: at the Canadian Community Newspaper Awards in 2024, the Goat took first place in the Best Feature Story category for reporter Laura Keil's feature revisiting the 2003 McLure wildfire outage, when a fire-damaged transmission line left some 7,500 people across the North Thompson and Robson valleys without regular power for more than three weeks. That retrospective, published on the twentieth anniversary of the outage, drew on the memories of residents, business owners and officials across the valley — an example of the paper's practice of treating regional history as living news.

The Goat has also been part of collaborative journalism beyond its own pages. When the July 2024 Jasper wildfire complex forced the evacuation of Jasper, thousands of evacuees travelled west to Valemount, which grew roughly twenty-fold overnight; the Goat's coverage and photography of the valley's response were carried by the Jasper Local, the independent newspaper in Jasper itself. In July 2026, The Tyee published an investigation into land purchases near Dunster by a company co-owned by two American billionaires, produced in partnership with the Rocky Mountain Goat, whose editor reported the local side of the story.

Programming and Content

The Goat's editorial mix centres on the institutions of the Robson Valley. Council coverage spans both village councils — Valemount and McBride — and the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George, whose decisions on recreation centres, bylaw enforcement and infrastructure reach every valley community. The paper reports on elections and byelections, including McBride's, and on provincial matters through a legislative reporter, Fran Yanor, whose byline appears on stories about provincial funding and policy affecting the region.

News coverage extends to policing and the courts, health care and staff housing, education, and the valley's resource and tourism economies. In April 2026 the paper's Local Journalism Initiative reporter, Abigail Popple, reported the arrest of Valemount's mayor on allegations of sexual assault, a story picked up by provincial and national outlets; the same reporting documented community services, wildfire preparedness and the shortage of mental-health and health services in the valley. Business coverage follows local employers, real estate and land use — including sustained reporting on outside land acquisition around Dunster and its effect on the farming community there.

True to its stated focus, outdoor and adventure coverage is a standing part of the mix: trail stewardship, Mount Robson Provincial Park and the Berg Lake Trail, fishing derbies, snowmobiling, skiing and the volunteer events that structure valley life, from the Valemount Marina's annual fishing derby to the Terry Fox Trek. Editorials written by editor and publisher Spencer Hall comment on regional district and council decisions, and the print edition carries classified advertising, real estate listings and community announcements alongside its news pages.

Audience and Reach

The Goat's audience is the Robson Valley itself: roughly a thousand people in Valemount, several hundred more in McBride, and the residents of Dunster, Tête Jaune Cache, Crescent Spur, Dome Creek and the surrounding rural areas, with a smaller readership in Blue River and among Jasper residents with ties to the valley. It is a paid newspaper: the cover price shown on its front page in 2023 was $2.25 including GST, with subscriber copies priced at $1.30. Its readers encounter the paper in print on Thursdays, through its website, and through the republication of its reporting by partner outlets such as the Jasper Local and The Tyee, which carries its local coverage to provincial audiences.

Because the valley's communities are small, the paper's reporting is frequently the only independent record of local government decisions. Its 2026 partnership with The Tyee on the Dunster land story, and the pickup of its mayoral-arrest reporting by CBC and other outlets, illustrate how the Goat's audience extends beyond subscribers whenever valley news becomes provincial news.

Digital Presence

The paper publishes online at therockymountaingoat.com, where its print content appears under the banner "In Print | Online," and its stories are tracked by journalist databases such as Muck Rack, which indexes recent articles by its reporters including Abigail Popple, Spencer Hall and Laura Keil. Photographs and stories from the Goat appear on the Jasper Local's website with credit to the Rocky Mountain Goat newspaper, reflecting an informal syndication relationship between the two independent mountain papers. The Goat's digital presence supports its print edition rather than replacing it: the weekly paper remains the core product, with the website extending the reach of individual stories, including its collaborative investigations.

Ownership and Organisation

The Rocky Mountain Goat is locally owned and based in Valemount. Spencer Hall is the paper's editor and publisher, as identified by The Tyee in its July 2026 partnership story, and he writes the paper's editorials. The newsroom includes a Local Journalism Initiative reporter, Abigail Popple, whose position is part of the national programme that funds local reporting in under-served communities; legislative reporter Fran Yanor; and reporter Laura Keil, whose feature writing has won national community newspaper awards. The operation is small enough that its print schedule bends around it: in the summer of 2023 the paper announced there would be no editions on August 10 or 31 to accommodate staff holidays, with reduced office hours in those weeks.

The Goat operates alongside the Valley Sentinel, Valemount's other locally owned paper, in one of the smallest two-newspaper markets in British Columbia. Its business is the standard community newspaper model — paid circulation and local advertising, including the real estate, tourism and municipal advertising visible in its pages — supplemented by the Local Journalism Initiative funding that supports its reporter position.

Contact and Availability

The Rocky Mountain Goat is published weekly on Thursdays in Valemount, British Columbia, and is available in print in the Robson Valley and online at therockymountaingoat.com. The paper's office can be reached by telephone at 250-566-4606. Advertising enquiries can be sent to ads@goatnewsmedia.com, and the paper also lists goatnewspaper@gmail.com as a contact address; both addresses are published on its front page. Its Publications Mail agreement number, printed on the masthead, is PM42164515.