About Wakaw Recorder

Wakaw Recorder

Overview

The Wakaw Recorder is an independent community weekly newspaper serving Wakaw and the surrounding district in central Saskatchewan, published from 128 – 1st Street South in the town of Wakaw. The Saskatchewan Media Directory, in its June 2025 edition, describes it simply as "a weekly newspaper serving Wakaw and area," and lists it among the province's current community newspapers — a status borne out by the paper's own output, which continues into the autumn of 2026.

The Recorder's coverage district, as the paper itself set it out in a Local Journalism Initiative proposal published by News Media Canada, takes in Wakaw, Rosthern, Cudworth, Bruno, St. Louis and One Arrow First Nation, together with the surrounding rural area. It is one of the small, locally run weeklies that still record the civic and social life of Saskatchewan's small towns at first hand — council meetings, school and library news, church and club activity, and the announcements of the rural municipalities around Wakaw — at a time when many comparable papers in the province have closed or been folded into larger chains.

History

The Recorder's earliest history is thinly documented in public sources, and no founding year for the paper could be verified from the records consulted for this profile; none is asserted here. What the record does show is a paper of considerable longevity. By the autumn of 1957 it was established enough to be quoted by other prairie newspapers: the Irma Times in Alberta, in its issue of October 11, 1957, repeated a homely item it credited to "the Wakaw Recorder, Sask.," about a friendly skunk that had taken up residence on the farm of Mr. and Mrs. J. J. Weixel. Editions of the Recorder cited in later historical accounts are Wednesday-dated — an edition of July 29, 1998 carried reporting on the closure of St. Michael's Hospital in nearby Cudworth and the moving of its equipment into a new facility, and the paper's edition of Wednesday, October 28, 2009 is cited for its account of the successor St. Michael's Haven.

A statement in the Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly on April 26, 1999 gives a snapshot of the paper at the end of the twentieth century: the Recorder was then owned and operated by a local couple, Dwayne and Marj, whom the statement described as two of the most involved people in Wakaw — active in the church choir, the parish council, the board of trade, minor sports and the arena association. Marj's involvements listed in the same statement included the Wakaw Ukrainian Dancing Association, the figure skating and ladies' curling clubs, the hospital auxiliary, the Girl Guide movement and Wakaw town council, while Dwayne was a 24-year member of the Wakaw Lions Club, a past mayor of Wakaw and a past chair of the Wakaw Housing Authority.

The paper has also depended, in the prairie weekly tradition, on community correspondents. The Ukrainian Canadian Congress's Saskatchewan Nation Builders profiles record that Natalia Maruschak served as the Recorder's reporter covering Ukrainian events in the Alvena area for more than fifty years, a role that made her a recognized resource on Ukrainian culture in the district. More recently, the provincial media directories of 2023 and 2025 list Karen Olryd as the Recorder's publisher and Gil Maraboto as its editor, and the paper appeared among the Saskatchewan titles in the Saskatchewan Weekly Newspapers Association's 2019 AdCanada publication list.

Programming and Content

The Recorder's editorial core is civic coverage of its district. In its Local Journalism Initiative proposal, published by News Media Canada, the paper set out the structure of that coverage in its own words: weekly town and rural-municipality updates, weekly updates from the local MLA's office and monthly updates from the local MP, coverage of town and RM meetings and announcements, and functions of the local library and non-profit organizations — a plan the paper said would produce a minimum of five short articles per week and address gaps in civic journalism across Wakaw, Rosthern, Cudworth, Bruno, St. Louis and One Arrow First Nation.

That programme is visible in the paper's current output. In August 2026 the Recorder's Local Journalism Initiative reporter, Carol Baldwin, reported on the 150th anniversary of Treaty 6 — signed at Fort Carlton on August 23, 1876 — and the commemorative events planned for the anniversary, a story carried by monitoring services on August 21, 2026. Alongside its local reporting, the paper's website carries provincial news of direct interest to its readers, such as Saskatchewan charitable gaming grants paid to community groups and provincial economic reporting, together with Saskatchewan RCMP releases affecting rural communities.

The website also carries the general service journalism typical of a modern community paper: public-health features such as a back-to-school immunization article dated September 16, 2026, an October 2025 feature on cyber security, an August 2025 article on Saskatchewan's position on the national Crime Severity Index, and a March 2025 fraud-prevention feature prepared with the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. Obituaries and community notices — the record of births, deaths and milestones that prairie readers expect of their weekly — form part of the paper's offering, and its correspondents contribute community reporting of the kind Natalia Maruschak supplied from Alvena over five decades.

Audience and Reach

The Recorder's audience is centred on Wakaw, a town of 978 people at the 2021 census (up from 922 in 2016), set in the aspen parkland roughly halfway between Saskatchewan's two largest cities: about 90 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon and 66 kilometres south of Prince Albert, at the junction of Highways 2, 41 and 312. Around the town lie the rural municipalities of Hoodoo No. 401 and Fish Creek No. 402 and the neighbouring communities named in the paper's coverage plan — Rosthern, Cudworth, Bruno and St. Louis — together with One Arrow First Nation.

The district's readership is a farming and small-town one, descended in large part from the Eastern European settlers who peopled the area, and it swells seasonally: nearby Wakaw Lake, from which the town takes its Cree name meaning "crooked," has about 800 cabins, some occupied year-round. No audited circulation figure for the Recorder is published in current directories, and none is claimed here; its reach is that of a district weekly read in the town, the surrounding farm country and the smaller communities of its coverage area.

Digital Presence

The Recorder publishes online at wakawrecorder.ca, and the provincial media directory lists the paper on social media under the handle @WakawRecorder. Monitoring of the paper's website shows material being published continuously through 2025 and 2026 — among the items recorded are the March 2025 fraud-prevention feature, the August 2025 crime-index article, the October 2025 cyber-security feature and the September 2026 back-to-school article — as well as provincial news items carried under the Recorder's name by news-monitoring services.

The digital output mirrors the print paper's mix: locally produced civic reporting, including the work of its Local Journalism Initiative reporter, appears alongside provincial releases and syndicated service features. Readers can reach the paper through its website and social channels as well as through the weekly print edition, and the directory listing gives the paper's own contact email, info@wakawrecorder.ca, for readers and advertisers.

Ownership and Organisation

The Wakaw Recorder is an independent, locally based operation. It does not appear in the published rosters of the national chains that own many Saskatchewan newspapers, and the provincial media directory lists it as a standalone weekly with its own office in Wakaw. The 2023 and 2025 editions of the Saskatchewan Media Directory both name Karen Olryd as publisher and Gil Maraboto as editor. A generation earlier, the paper was owned and operated by Dwayne and Marj, the Wakaw couple honoured in the Legislative Assembly in 1999, and its reporting bench has long included community correspondents in outlying villages as well as staff in Wakaw itself.

In the 2020s the paper added a Local Journalism Initiative reporting position: the Recorder's proposal to News Media Canada sought support to close civic-coverage gaps across its six-community district, and by August 2026 Carol Baldwin was filing for the paper under the title Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Wakaw Recorder. The combination — a small local masthead, community correspondents, and a federally supported civic reporter — is the organisational model on which the Recorder currently operates.

Contact and Availability

The Wakaw Recorder is published weekly from 128 – 1st Street South, Box 65, Wakaw, Saskatchewan S0K 4P0. The paper can be reached by telephone at (306) 233-4325 and by email at info@wakawrecorder.ca, and online at wakawrecorder.ca, with social media under the handle @WakawRecorder. Editions cited in the historical record were Wednesday-dated, and the paper remains listed as a current weekly in the June 2025 Saskatchewan Media Directory, serving Wakaw and the surrounding communities of its district.