About Drumheller Mail

Drumheller Mail

The Drumheller Mail is the community newspaper of Drumheller, Alberta — one of Alberta's oldest community newspapers, established in 1911 and family-owned by the Sheddy family for generations. Founded by Grover Cleveland Duncan in the village of Munson, moved to Drumheller in 1918, it has chronicled more than 110 years of the valley: the coal-mining boom, the dinosaur discoveries, the tourism age. It publishes weekly in print and daily online — Drumheller's longest-running and most comprehensive news website since 2000. (Wikipedia lists drumhellermail.com as its website.)

Overview

The Drumheller Mail is the dinosaur capital's paper: the weekly of the badlands, the Red Deer River valley, the hoodoos and the Royal Tyrrell Museum. Drumheller's story is the paper's story: the coal-mining boom of the 1910s and 1920s that built a valley of mine towns — the miners, the tipples, the company stores; the bust that followed; then the dinosaur renaissance — the fossil discoveries that made the valley world-famous, crowned by the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, which opened in 1985 and draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. The Mail covered it all: the coal, the bones, the tourists. For more than a century it has been the valley's record — through the coal boom that built Drumheller, the bust that emptied it, the dinosaur discoveries that reinvented it, and the tourism economy that sustains it today.

The paper's distinction is its independence and endurance: in 100 years, 15 newspapers started in the Drumheller area — the Mail outlasted them all, maintaining the largest proven circulation. Family-owned since 1952, online since 2000, it is the rare community paper that has never been swallowed by a chain: the Sheddy family's paper, the valley's paper — the independent voice of the badlands.

History

In 1911, The Mail was started by Grover Cleveland Duncan in Munson, Alberta — a village in the coal country east of Drumheller, named for the American president. Duncan's timing was the coal boom's: the valley's mines were hiring thousands, the towns were rising from the prairie, and a newspaper was the boomtown's necessity — the advertisements, the announcements, the record. The Mail was born as the coal industry's paper, and it would follow the industry into Drumheller itself — the boomtown's chronicle from the very start. In April 1918, the printing plant was moved into Drumheller and amalgamated with the printing job plant of E.C. Payne — the paper following the coal industry's workers into the valley's booming townsite, planting its press in the town that would become the valley's centre.

In September 1952, three Drumheller businessmen — John Anderson, Sam Robb, and Osborne Sheddy Sr. — purchased the newspaper from the Clarke Brothers: the paper passing from one local ownership to another, the valley keeping its voice. The trio's division of labour — accountant, pressman, salesman-manager — was the community paper in miniature: the numbers, the press, the street. Anderson was the accountant, Robb the pressman, and Sheddy the young salesman and manager of the operations. Over time, Ossie Sheddy reinvested his share of the profits into purchasing more ownership until he owned all shares in 1972. As of 2009, Drumheller Mail Ltd. was still owned by the Sheddy family, employing more than 20 people; Ossie Sheddy Jr. and Osborne (Bob) Sheddy III run the business.

In 2000, the newspaper went online — early for a community weekly — and the website became Drumheller's longest-running and most comprehensive news website. In 2011, the paper celebrated 100 years of publishing in Alberta: a century of the valley's news. The centennial was the valley's too — the paper that arrived with the coal boom still publishing in the dinosaur age, the Sheddy family's third generation at the helm, the weekly that had outlasted every rival. Fifteen papers had started in the area over the century; the Mail buried them all — not through ruthlessness but through rootedness: the family's paper, the valley's paper, the one that stayed.

Content

The Mail covers the Drumheller valley: town council, the county, the schools, the courts, the businesses — and the valley's unique beats: the Royal Tyrrell Museum's discoveries, the dinosaur tourism, the badlands' palaeontology, the river valley's floods and fires. Its reporters cover the stories no other paper touches: the new species named from valley fossils, the hoodoo preservation battles, the Atlas Coal Mine's heritage tours, the valley's dark-sky summers. The paper's community pages — the sports, the school news, the obituaries, the anniversaries — are the valley's family album: the miners' grandchildren now working at the museum, the farm kids now guiding the dinosaur tours. It is community journalism in the purest sense: the paper as the valley's noticeboard, its debating chamber, its family album — the record of ordinary life in an extraordinary landscape.

Coverage and Audience

The paper serves Drumheller and the surrounding valley — the former coal towns (Munson, where it all began, among them), the farms, the badlands communities: the valley's scattered settlements along the Red Deer River. Its readers are the valley's people: the miners' descendants, the museum workers, the tourism operators, the farmers, the palaeontologists — the community that lives in one of the world's great fossil landscapes. Its readers are the valley's people: the miners' descendants, the museum workers, the tourism operators, the farmers.

The Mail has maintained the largest proven circulation of any paper in the area's history — outlasting 15 competitors over a century: the proven record of the valley's trust. Its website extends that reach: the valley's diaspora, the dinosaur tourists planning visits, the former residents — the Mail's readers, wherever the badlands' children have scattered.

Ownership

The Drumheller Mail is owned by Drumheller Mail Ltd., the Sheddy family's company — purchased in 1952 by Anderson, Robb and Sheddy Sr., consolidated by Ossie Sheddy by 1972, run by Ossie Sheddy Jr. and Osborne (Bob) Sheddy III. The ownership story is the classic community-paper arc: the accountant, the pressman and the salesman buying the paper they worked for; the salesman's patient reinvestment until he owned it outright; the family's multi-generational stewardship. Independent, family-owned, community-rooted — the rare paper that answers to its readers, not a chain's shareholders.

Digital Presence

Since 2000, the Mail has published at drumhellermail.com (Wikipedia lists drumhellermail.com as its website) — Drumheller's longest-running and most comprehensive news website: the daily-updated digital edition of the valley's paper, carrying the community's news beyond the badlands. Going online in 2000 was early for a community weekly — the Sheddys saw the digital future before most small papers did — and the website's longevity is its own record: a quarter-century of valley news online, the archive of the dinosaur age's daily life.

As of 2026, the Drumheller Mail continues — more than 115 years after the 1911 founding, still family-owned, still the valley's paper, still the Mail, still the valley's own paper, The paper's mid-century heyday is preserved in its own archives: a November 1967 front page boasted a circulation of 3,407 copies per issue and a readership of more than 12,000 — the valley's paper at full strength, 14 pages for ten cents, covering the council's 20-year town plan, the arena commission, the Legion's poppy night. Those front pages are the valley's diary: the coal towns' civic life, recorded week after week, in the Mail's own type.

still and always the Mail. From Grover Cleveland Duncan's Munson startup to the Sheddy family's third generation, from hot metal to the website, it remains what it has always been: the Drumheller valley's own paper, the record of the badlands, the voice of the valley.

Note: website left empty in frontmatter per project rule for url-unverified rows; Wikipedia lists drumhellermail.com as its website.