About Winkler Morden Voice

Winkler Morden Voice

Overview

The Winkler Morden Voice is a weekly community newspaper serving the neighbouring cities of Winkler and Morden in Manitoba's Pembina Valley, along with the smaller communities around them in the province's south-central farm belt. Published every Thursday and distributed by mail to households in both cities and many surrounding communities, it has been the only locally produced newspaper for Winkler and Morden since 2020, when its two long-established rivals, the Winkler Times and the Morden Times, ceased publication. The Voice covers the full run of community life in two of Manitoba's fastest-growing small cities: city councils, courts, schools, churches, farm news, business openings and closings, sports, obituaries and the volunteer-driven events that anchor the region's calendar.

Winkler and Morden sit about 13 kilometres apart on the floor of the Pembina Valley, west of the Red River. Winkler counted 13,745 residents in the 2021 census, up 8.6 per cent from 2016, and Morden counted 9,929, making the pair a combined market of more than 23,000 people before the surrounding rural municipalities of Stanley, Roland and Thompson and the smaller centres that also receive the paper are taken into account. Growth in both cities has been driven substantially by immigration, and newcomer stories are a recurring feature of the Voice's coverage.

History

The Voice is a comparatively young paper with deep roots in Manitoba community journalism. It was launched in 2010 by publisher Lana Meier, who had spent 17 years with the Quebecor newspaper chain after her family sold its Manitoba community papers — among them the Selkirk Journal, the Interlake Spectator and the Stonewall Argus — to Quebecor in 1992. Meier rose to become the chain's senior group publisher in Manitoba before leaving in 2010, telling CBC Manitoba that she felt the company had lost touch with what a community newspaper was really about. That year she started her own rival papers under her company, Big and Colourful Printing & Publishing: the Selkirk Record, the Stonewall Teulon Tribune and the Winkler Morden Voice. A fourth title, Express Weekly News for the north Interlake, followed in 2014, and the Altona Rhineland Voice was added in 2022.

The Voice entered a market that already had two incumbent weeklies, the Winkler Times and the Morden Times, by then owned by Sun Media and later Postmedia. For a decade the upstart competed against the chain papers in both cities. The contest ended in April and May 2020, when Postmedia permanently closed a group of Manitoba and Ontario community newspapers, including the Winkler Times and the Morden Times. Announcing the closures, which cost 30 employees their jobs across the two provinces, Postmedia said the papers were losing money and were no longer viable amid an unprecedented decline in advertising revenue. The closures left the Voice as the sole local newspaper produced for either city — a position it continues to hold. The irony was not lost on its publisher: Meier's family had once owned several of the Manitoba weeklies the chain was closing, and she told CBC she was saddened by the loss of that legacy even as her own papers carried on without chain competition.

Programming and Content

The Voice's reporting is built around the institutions of the two cities and the valley. Council coverage from Winkler and Morden city halls is a staple, as are stories from the Garden Valley and Western school divisions, the region's health facilities at Boundary Trails Health Centre, and the agricultural economy — grain, livestock, farm-equipment dealers and the food-processing plants that employ much of the workforce. The paper follows local sport closely, including the Winkler Flyers of the Manitoba Junior Hockey League, high-school teams at Garden Valley Collegiate, Northlands Parkway Collegiate and Morden Collegiate, and the summer fair and rodeo circuit.

Its pages also reflect the valley's distinctive social fabric: Mennonite church and community life, the Morden Corn and Apple Festival, the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre, and the steady arrival of newcomer families. Stories carried in 2026 editions include the area's graduation parades, a vandalized Pride billboard between the two cities, a World Refugee Day celebration hosted by Regional Connections Immigrant Services in Winkler's Bethel Heritage Park, the Morden Christmas Cheer Board's hamper drive and the Morden Area Foundation's annual grant presentations. Senior reporter Lorne Stelmach, who has covered the region for more than 30 years, is a familiar byline on arts, heritage and municipal stories.

Audience and Reach

The Voice is delivered by mail each week to households in Winkler and Morden and to many smaller surrounding communities, giving it blanket household coverage of its two home cities rather than relying on newsstand sales. Its audience is the combined population of the twin cities — more than 23,000 people at the 2021 census — plus surrounding farm households in one of Manitoba's most prosperous agricultural districts. The region's population growth, fuelled by immigration through the provincial nominee program and by expansion in food processing and manufacturing, has steadily enlarged the paper's market over its decade and a half of publication.

Under editor Ashleigh Viveiros, who has held the editor's chair since the paper's 2010 launch, the Voice has received numerous awards from the Manitoba Community Newspapers Association, including Best All-Around Newspaper, Best in Class and Best Layout and Design. Viveiros herself has won multiple MCNA writing awards and placed second for the association's Reporter of the Year Award in 2022.

Digital Presence

The paper publishes online at winklermordenvoice.ca, and its stories are also carried on Manitoba News 101, the shared digital platform where Manitoba community newspapers post their reporting. Its June 2026 coverage — including the combined graduation-parade story for the two cities' high schools — confirms the paper remains in active weekly publication. The website serves as the paper's digital storefront for readers who receive the print edition by mail and for former residents who follow the valley's news from elsewhere.

Ownership and Organisation

The Voice is owned and published by Big and Colourful Printing & Publishing, the independent Manitoba company founded by publisher Lana Meier. Industry records compiled by News Media Canada list Big and Colourful Printing & Publishing as the publisher of the Winkler Morden Voice alongside its sister titles, the Selkirk Record, the Stonewall Teulon Tribune and The Express Weekly in Gimli. Meier, whose family published Manitoba weeklies for decades before the 1992 sale to Quebecor, is the company's publisher. The Voice's editor is Ashleigh Viveiros, who began her career in 2000 as a cub reporter on the former Winkler Times's high-school beat and has edited the Voice since its first year; she also edits the group's Altona Rhineland Voice. Longtime reporter Lorne Stelmach joined the Voice in 2015 after a career that began at the Dauphin Herald and included a stint at the Morden Times from 1987 to 2013, and his individual honours include the Golden Hand Award from the Volunteer Centre of Winnipeg and multiple Manitoba Community Newspapers Association awards.

Contact and Availability

The Winkler Morden Voice is published weekly on Thursdays and arrives by mail at households across Winkler, Morden and surrounding communities in the Pembina Valley; individual copies and back issues are available through the paper's office channels and its website, winklermordenvoice.ca, which also carries the paper's current contact information for news tips, advertising and subscriptions. Readers outside the delivery area can follow the paper's reporting through its website and through the Manitoba News 101 platform, where its stories appear under the Winkler Voice banner.