About Stratford Times

Stratford Times

Overview

The Stratford Times is a free weekly community newspaper serving Stratford, the Perth County city in southwestern Ontario best known for the Stratford Festival and its Avon River setting. It is published by Grant Haven Media, the independent Western Ontario newspaper group owned by Stewart Grant, and it is the third Stratford paper in the city's history to carry the Times name. The Ontario Community Newspapers Association (OCNA) member directory lists the Stratford Times under Grant Haven Media with a circulation of 3,500 copies per edition, and Wikipedia's article on Stratford, updated in October 2026, lists the Times among the city's current newspapers alongside the Beacon Herald. The Times reaches readers primarily through free pickup copies stacked at dozens of Stratford businesses and institutions, and it is one of the Grant Haven titles that share the publisher's granthaven.com domain — the reason this row was held for review against the group's Goderich Sun anchor profile. The adjudication is clear: the OCNA directory lists the Stratford Times as a separate member publication with its own circulation figure, its own Stratford newsroom reporting and its own edition, distinct from the Goderich Sun and from every other Grant Haven title.

History

Stratford has had a newspaper called the Times twice before. Betty Jo Belton's history of the paper, prepared for the Stratford-Perth Archives and published on the Streets of Stratford site, records that one Stratford Times was published from 1876 into the early 1890s and a second from the mid-1960s into the early 1970s; both runs are preserved at the Stratford-Perth Archives. The modern paper is a new creation rather than a continuation of either. Belton's history notes that "today in 2022 there is a new Stratford Times newspaper," and the paper's own numbering agrees: its edition of January 23, 2026 is marked Volume 5, Issue 23, consistent with a 2022 launch by Grant Haven Media. The Times entered a market that had lost its second paper in November 2017, when the Stratford Gazette closed, leaving the Postmedia-owned Beacon Herald as the city's only newspaper. Stewart Grant, who founded Grant Haven Media with his June 2014 purchase of the St. Marys Independent in his hometown of St. Marys, has built the group by launching or acquiring free community weeklies in Western Ontario towns where chain publishers have thinned their presence. Grant listed the Stratford Times among his papers in a November 17, 2023 editorial in another of his titles, the Woodstock Ingersoll Echo, and by then the Times was an established part of the group's lineup. Within its first years the paper was publishing at a scale that made it a fixture of Stratford retail: its January 2026 editions print a pickup-location list running to roughly seventy-five Stratford-area outlets.

Programming and Content

The Stratford Times covers the civic and cultural life of Stratford and Perth County: city council and committee decisions, the Stratford Police Service and its board, social services and housing programs, schools, churches, service clubs, local sports and the visitor economy built around the Festival. Its January 23, 2026 edition shows the range in a single issue. The front page led with a provincial shakeup of the Stratford police services board, reporting by Local Journalism Initiative reporter Connor Luczka on the removal of board chair Steve Cousins and the appointment of new provincial members. The same issue carried Local Journalism Initiative reporter Galen Simmons on the city's affordable-homeownership loan program for Stratford, St. Marys and Perth County renters; correspondent Emily Stewart's wrap of the sixth annual Lights On Stratford winter festival, which drew more than 22,000 patrons to its Chronoharp installation; a "St. Paul's Swan Song" feature on a Stratford church; and photography by Amanda Nelson from a January snowstorm. The paper also carries guest and freelance columns — a column by Stratford resident Loreena McKennitt received an honourable mention in the Best Guest/Freelance Column category of the OCNA's 2025 Better Newspapers Competition — along with puzzles, community announcements and local advertising. Photographer Amanda Modaragamage was a 2025 BNC finalist in the Most Creative Grip and Grin Photo category for her Times work, evidence of a small newsroom competing credibly in the provincial community-press awards.

Audience and Reach

The OCNA directory figure of 3,500 copies per edition is a publisher-group figure carried by the industry association's member directory rather than an independently audited number, and it is best read as the scale of the Times' print distribution in Stratford. The distribution model is free pickup: the paper's own January 2026 pickup list names grocery stores such as Zehrs, Food Basics, Sobeys and No Frills; Tim Hortons, McDonald's and A&W outlets; the Stratford Hospital, Stratford Public Library, Stratford-Perth Museum, Stratford Rotary Complex and Agriplex; car dealerships, pharmacies and independent cafés and shops across the city, extending to Sebringville on the city's edge. Town Crier Marketing, which promotes Stratford businesses through its Shop Stratford platform, has publicly celebrated how quickly the Times moves at those pickup spots and how many locations stock it — third-party evidence that the free-paper model has found an audience in the city. Readers who want home delivery can take a paid mail subscription: the paper's own subscription notice in January 2026 priced a Canada Post subscription at $77 and directed payment to Grant Haven Media. The Times' audience is Stratford's roughly 33,000 residents and the surrounding Perth County communities its coverage touches, including St. Marys and Perth South, which appear in its reporting through shared services such as the police board and social services.

Digital Presence

The Stratford Times' digital home is the shared Grant Haven Media website, granthaven.com, which serves the whole group rather than any single paper; community sources such as Shop Stratford link readers to the paper at granthaven.com/stratford-times. In line with the group's stated model, editions are published on the site in PDF and flipbook form, so the Times is read online in replica form rather than through a standalone article-driven news site of its own. The January 2026 print edition also promoted a stratfordtimes.com address in its pages, which should be sighted directly at publish time to confirm how it resolves. The domain could not be rendered by the research fetcher used to prepare this profile — as with the other Grant Haven titles, the current digital edition and masthead should be checked directly on granthaven.com before this profile is published.

Ownership and Organisation

The Stratford Times is owned and published by Grant Haven Media, the independent newspaper company of Stewart Grant. Grant founded the business in June 2014 with the purchase of the St. Marys Independent and has grown it into a Western Ontario group; in a 2026 announcement reported by the Cobourg News Blog he described himself as successfully publishing twelve other newspapers in Western Ontario, a figure larger than the number of individual titles the OCNA directory lists and which may reflect multiple editions. The OCNA directory lists these titles under Grant Haven Media, each with its own circulation figure: the St. Marys Independent, the Woodstock Ingersoll Echo, the Tillsonburg Post, the Simcoe Advocate, the Wilmot-Tavistock Gazette, the Goderich Sun, the Paris Independent and the Stratford Times. The Times' reporting is produced by a small team that includes Local Journalism Initiative reporters Connor Luczka and Galen Simmons — Simmons is based in Stratford and also serves as a regional editor within the group — correspondent Emily Stewart, and photographers including Amanda Nelson and Amanda Modaragamage. The Local Journalism Initiative is a federal program that funds reporters in underserved communities, and its presence on the Times' masthead is part of how a free advertising-supported weekly sustains dedicated civic reporting. The paper is a member of the Ontario Community Newspapers Association.

Contact and Availability

The Stratford Times is published weekly by Grant Haven Media and is available free at pickup locations across Stratford, including grocery stores, coffee shops, the public library, the hospital and the Rotary Complex, with a paid Canada Post subscription offered for readers who prefer mail delivery; the paper's own subscription notice priced that subscription at $77 in January 2026. The paper has published a contact email, stratfordtimes@gmail.com, in its own pages. Its current edition is published in PDF and flipbook form through the publisher's website, granthaven.com, where the group's papers, advertising and subscription routes are listed. A direct visual check of the Grant Haven website at publish time is recommended to confirm the Times' latest issue, its current pickup distribution and the publisher's current contact details.