About Sept Days

Sept Days

Overview

Sept Days is a Chinese-language weekly newspaper published in Montreal, Quebec, by Sept Days Media. Written in Chinese with a masthead that playfully combines French, Chinese and English — "Sept七天 Days" — the paper serves Montreal's Mandarin- and Cantonese-speaking communities with original local reporting, a commitment its founders set out explicitly against the alternative of simply translating Canadian wire stories into Chinese. Reference listings give the paper a circulation of around 17,000 copies. The newspaper carries ISSN 1929-6320 and is headquartered at 3420 rue Fabien-Laberge in Montreal.

Sept Days sits within a small publishing group that also produces a Chinese-language business weekly and, since 2016, a French-language monthly called La Connexion. It has also built an unusual sideline for a community newspaper: by 2021 it had published eight books of essays, profiles and community history. In a Montreal Chinese media landscape that has thinned considerably, Sept Days remains one of the city's principal Chinese-language print outlets, and its parent company continues to appear as a media partner at major community events, including the Phoenix Spring Festival Gala, Montreal's flagship Chinese New Year celebration.

History

Sept Days was founded on July 7, 2006, by Yin Ling (尹灵), a Chinese immigrant who had arrived in Montreal years earlier and worked in the finance sector before moving into media. Yin holds bachelor's degrees in both literature and commerce, and she remains the paper's owner and publisher. The masthead — mixing the French word for seven with the Chinese characters for "seven days" and the English word "days" — was chosen to signal the paper's Canadian, multicultural setting, and the publication's habit of original coverage soon set it apart from other Chinese-language papers in the city, which relied heavily on translated material.

Within its second year the paper made a mark that is still cited in profiles of the publication: in 2007, Sept Days sent its journalist Hu Xian to cover Canada's war in Afghanistan, described by People's Daily as the first time an overseas Chinese-language newspaper had sent its own correspondent to report from a war zone. A February 2008 profile in the Montreal Gazette sketched the paper's early economics: three full-time reporters and five regular freelancers, and, according to Yin, some 50,000 weekly readers and 10,000 copies printed of each edition. The Gazette reported that the paper was not yet profitable at that point, balancing advertising income against support from its board.

Sept Days came to national and international attention in the following decade. China's state newspaper People's Daily marked the paper's tenth anniversary in October 2016, noting that its annual readers' gatherings had become highlights of Montreal Chinese community life, and during Premier Li Keqiang's visit to Canada in 2016 Yin was among the ethnic-media publishers invited to a symposium with the visiting premier. In later years the paper's ownership and editorial relationships attracted a different kind of scrutiny: in 2023, the American political news outlet Politico reported on ties between the newspaper and the Chinese Communist Party, in coverage of Beijing's influence efforts in Canada, an allegation that placed Sept Days at the centre of a wider Canadian debate about foreign interference in diaspora media.

Programming and Content

As a weekly newspaper, Sept Days builds each edition around Montreal and Quebec news, Canadian federal news, community life, business coverage and news from China and the wider Chinese-speaking world. Its distinguishing editorial feature, set out at its founding and maintained since, is a preference for original staff reporting — attending the events, conducting the interviews and writing the stories in Chinese for a local readership — over translated wire copy. The paper's Afghanistan coverage in 2007 was the flagship example of that approach, and its community reporting on Montreal's Chinese schools, associations, arts groups and festivals has remained its staple.

Alongside the flagship weekly, the Sept Days group publishes a Chinese-language business weekly aimed at entrepreneurs and investors in the community, and in 2016 it launched La Connexion, a French-language monthly newspaper designed to speak to francophone readers about Montreal's Chinese community and its connections with China. In 2016 Yin also served as a journey participant in the Canada C3 expedition, a Canada 150 voyage around Canada's coasts, further raising the publisher's public profile. The group's book-publishing activity has produced titles including Inspired by Norman Bethune (2014), a volume marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Canadian surgeon's death in China, and Elite Chinese Canadians (2018), a collection of profiles. The newspaper also runs a readers' club that organises cultural and social activities for its audience.

Audience and Reach

Sept Days addresses Montreal's Chinese-speaking population — the readership of a free-distribution community weekly picked up at Chinese supermarkets, restaurants, community centres and other gathering points across the city and its suburbs. The circulation figure of approximately 17,000 copies carried in reference listings would place it among the larger Chinese-language community papers in Quebec. The readership claims made at the paper's two-year mark — 50,000 weekly readers, according to its publisher in a 2008 newspaper interview — are dated and self-reported, and no independently audited circulation figures for the paper have been published more recently.

The paper's reach is also institutional. Sept Days Media is a fixture in the credit lines of Montreal Chinese community life: it was listed among the cooperating media partners of the twenty-first Phoenix Spring Festival Gala, the large Lunar New Year production staged by Montreal's Phoenix Arts Troupe, with Yin Ling named among the gala's honorary advisors. With the closure of Ming Pao's Canadian editions in January 2026 ending the era of a Chinese-language daily press in Canada, weekly publications such as Sept Days have become proportionally more important as print voices for their communities.

Digital Presence

The newspaper's website is septdays.com, which presents the Sept Days brand and its publications and serves as the paper's online point of contact. Like most Canadian ethnic weeklies, Sept Days' day-to-day community presence runs substantially through Chinese-language social and messaging platforms and through the community event circuit, where the paper acts as a media partner and sponsor. Readers looking for the paper's current edition and announcements are best served through the website and the group's community channels; the print edition remains the paper's primary product and the centre of its identity.

Ownership and Organisation

Sept Days is published in Montreal by Sept Days Media, the company founded and owned by Yin Ling, who serves as publisher. Editorial leadership of the newspaper is held by editor-in-chief Isa Li (颜宏). The operation is deliberately small — at the point where it was profiled by the Montreal Gazette in 2008 it employed three full-time reporters supplemented by regular freelance contributors — and it combines the weekly newspaper with the group's business weekly, the French-language monthly La Connexion, its readers' club and its book-publishing list.

The company's head office is at 3420 rue Fabien-Laberge, Montreal. Beyond the newsroom, Yin has played a visible civic role: she has served on community boards, acted as an advisor to cultural organisations, and was selected for the Canada C3 voyage in 2017, where her biography summarised her publishing portfolio as "the Chinese-language newspaper Sept Days, a business weekly magazine, as well as the French monthly newspaper La Connexion."

Contact and Availability

Sept Days is available in print at distribution points serving Montreal's Chinese community, including supermarkets, restaurants and community organisations across the city. The newspaper's office is at 3420 rue Fabien-Laberge, Montreal, Quebec, and its website, septdays.com, provides the publisher's current contact information and details of the group's publications — the Sept Days weekly, the business weekly and the French monthly La Connexion. Readers and advertisers outside Montreal can contact Sept Days Media through the website, and community organisations frequently list the company as a media partner for events in the Montreal area.