About Le Haut Saint-François

Le Haut Saint-François

Overview

Le Haut Saint-François is a French- and English-language regional community newspaper serving the MRC du Haut-Saint-François in Quebec's Estrie region, published from Cookshire-Eaton. Created by the municipalities of the MRC themselves, it is distributed free of charge to households across the territory and appears every two weeks — not weekly, as it is sometimes described. Its reporting covers the fourteen municipalities of the Haut-Saint-François, from East Angus and Weedon to the smaller villages of Bury, Scotstown and Chartierville, and it is one of the relatively few Quebec regional papers that publishes substantial content in English as well as French, reflecting the historically significant anglophone community of the Cookshire-Eaton and Bury area. Its website, journalhautsaintfrancois.com, posts the paper's articles online in both languages.

History

The paper was founded in 1986. Marking its twentieth anniversary in the House of Commons on 10 May 2006, the local member of Parliament explained that the journal was born of a common will among all the municipalities of the MRC du Haut-Saint-François to equip themselves with a regional information tool, and that the municipalities still contributed financially to it twenty years later, on a voluntary basis. The same statement described it as a regional community newspaper distributed free to every household in the MRC every two weeks, and noted that its team had won several prizes awarded by the Association des médias écrits communautaires du Québec, the provincial association of community written media. The paper's own production records confirm the longevity of that rhythm: its published publication schedule for 2024 is headed volume 38 and lists issues at two-week intervals through the year.

For more than three decades, one of the paper's defining voices was journalist Pierre Hébert, whose byline appears throughout its online archive. When he retired, the National Assembly of Quebec paid him tribute on 30 January 2024, with the member for Mégantic saluting his 32 years at Le Haut Saint-François and describing him as a vigilant journalist who had given a voice to his community and reflected the economic, community, political and sociocultural life of the MRC. Distribution, long handled through the Publisac bundle network, became a preoccupation in 2024: council minutes of the town of Scotstown for 7 May 2024 record that the journal had asked municipalities to support its campaign over the end of Publisac distribution, through which it had reached every door free of charge, because it now faced Canada Post charges to deliver the paper.

Programming and Content

The paper's content is organized around the life of the MRC's municipalities. Its 2024 publication schedule shows themed issues rotating through the territory — Cookshire-Eaton, Bury, Ascot Corner, Scotstown and Hampden, La Patrie and Chartierville, Saint-Isidore-de-Clifton, Newport and Westbury, East Angus, Lingwick and Dudswell — combined with seasonal features on trucking, public markets, local products, hunting, the return to school and the agricultural calendar, including the Cookshire Fair, one of Quebec's oldest agricultural exhibitions. Municipal council meetings are covered in detail, in English as well as French when the community concerned warrants it: its report on a Cookshire-Eaton council meeting of March 2026, for example, was published in English. Community journalism of proximity fills the rest of the paper — food security and the Moisson Haut-Saint-François food bank, the Carrefour jeunesse-emploi, whose 2024-25 annual report notes that eight of its articles appeared in the journal, heritage features on places such as the Eaton Corner Museum, church and school news, and profiles of local volunteers and businesses. Journalist Marie-Claude Costisella is among the bylines on its recent French-language reporting. Its English pages include a recurring local-history column, and its heritage coverage follows stories such as the sale of Cookshire's 162-year-old Trinity United Church to the Espace culturel Cookshire-Eaton and the activities of the Eaton Corner Museum, in a village that was among the first settled by Europeans in the region in the 1790s.

The journal also occupies a distinct place in the local media ecosystem. A 2024 survey of Estrie media by Culture Estrie noted that more than half of the municipalities of the Haut-Saint-François also have their own small community publications — titles such as Bury's Image, the Reflet of Lingwick, L'Éveil du citoyen of Weedon, L'Évènement of Scotstown-Hampden and Le Papotin of Dudswell — and identified Le Haut-Saint-François, based in Cookshire-Eaton, as the regional journal serving the MRC as a whole, above that village-level layer. Its pages accordingly mix the granular community content of a local paper with the municipal and regional coverage — MRC council decisions, regional services, agricultural and forestry questions — that no single-village publication attempts.

Audience and Reach

The paper's audience is the whole population of the MRC du Haut-Saint-François, a rural territory of fourteen municipalities in the eastern Estrie, between Sherbrooke and the New Hampshire border. Its founding model was universal free distribution: from 1986 the paper was delivered without charge to every household in the MRC, a reach few commercial weeklies attempt, financed by advertising, by the voluntary financial contributions of the municipalities that created it, and by readers' goodwill. The end of Publisac delivery forced a reorganization of that distribution from 2024, as the paper moved to delivery arrangements for which Canada Post charges apply, and it appealed to its municipalities for support in absorbing the new costs — support that was debated town by town, and refused in at least one case, Scotstown, whose council pointed to the existence of its own local community paper.

Digital Presence

The paper publishes online at journalhautsaintfrancois.com, a site whose archive runs to hundreds of pages of articles in French and English. Stories are posted in step with the print cycle, and the site was carrying current local reporting through December 2025 and January 2026, including a Cookshire-Eaton council report dated March 2026 — evidence that the title remains in active publication. The paper's published contact email, info@journalhsf.com, uses the shorter journalhsf.com domain recorded in this directory; readers should note that its articles themselves appear under the journalhautsaintfrancois.com address. A directory listing by 211 Québec also gives the paper's telephone number and Cookshire-Eaton base, describing it as a community newspaper enabling the exchange and circulation of information across the whole territory of the MRC.

Ownership and Organisation

Le Haut Saint-François is not part of any commercial newspaper chain. It is a community-regional newspaper created in 1986 by the concerted action of the municipalities of the MRC du Haut-Saint-François, which have supported it financially, on a voluntary basis, since its founding — an unusual ownership and funding model in the Quebec press landscape, closer to the community-media sector than to the commercial weeklies. Its quality has been recognized within that sector: its twentieth-anniversary notice in the House of Commons recorded the awards it had received from the Association des médias écrits communautaires du Québec. The paper is produced by a small local team based in Cookshire-Eaton; over the years that team was anchored by journalist Pierre Hébert, whose 32 years of service ended with his retirement in early 2024, and its pages today carry the work of journalists including Marie-Claude Costisella, alongside contributions from the municipalities and community organizations of the territory.

Contact and Availability

Le Haut Saint-François is published in Cookshire-Eaton, Quebec, and can be reached by telephone at 819 875-5501 and by email at info@journalhsf.com. It appears every two weeks and is distributed free of charge across the MRC du Haut-Saint-François, with its articles also available online at journalhautsaintfrancois.com.