About North Island Gazette

North Island Gazette

Overview

The North Island Gazette is the community weekly newspaper of the Mount Waddington district at the northern end of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. It is published in print on Wednesdays by Black Press Ltd. and online at northislandgazette.com. Its own masthead states that the paper is published at #3-7053 Market Street in Port Hardy, and it serves the whole of the North Island: Port Hardy, Port McNeill, Port Alice, Alert Bay, Sointula and the smaller settlements along the mainland inlets. Print editions dated 18 February and 1 April 2026 are held in Black Press's pages archive, and the paper's website carried full results of the October 2026 municipal elections across the district, confirming that it continues to publish in both print and digital form.

This is one of the most remote newspaper markets in British Columbia: a scattering of logging, fishing, aquaculture and tourism communities, several of them reachable only by ferry, spread across the traditional territories of the Kwakwaka'wakw First Nations. The Gazette acts as the district's shared bulletin board and paper of record, carrying council news from four municipalities and the regional district, school district news, forestry and fisheries coverage, sports, and the public notices that governments and forest companies are required to publish.

History

The Gazette marked its sixtieth year in 2025. In its 17 September 2025 edition the paper announced that it was celebrating its 60th year in the community and would pull pictures and stories from its archives to mark the milestone; among the archive items it reproduced was a photograph first printed on 7 September 1966, showing seven-year-old Tracy Hickling with a 46-pound spring salmon. Those dates place the paper's beginnings in the mid-1960s, just as Port McNeill was being incorporated in February 1966 and the North Island was opening up to road traffic.

The paper's place in the region's civic fabric is long-standing. The Gazette has been raising funds for Christmas hampers in Port McNeill since 1980, according to the community site This is Port McNeill — a forty-five-year run of seasonal charity work that few institutions in so small a market could match. By the 1990s the Gazette, then published in Port Hardy, was the vehicle for statutory advertising in the district: the B.C. Forest Practices Board's records of a 1996 complaint list licensee notices placed in the North Island Gazette announcing forest development plans open for public review in Port Hardy. Its reporting also documented the long campaign for a paved Island Highway to the North Island; an article the paper published on 31 October 2007 recounting that history has been preserved in the Undiscovered Coast regional history archive.

In September 2025 the paper recorded a changing of the guard in its own commentary pages. Regional editor Erin Haluschak moved on, and Marc Kitteringham announced that he had stepped up to become regional editor for the Gazette together with the Campbell River Mirror and the Comox Valley Record, overseeing news production for all three communities. In the same edition, Brendan Jure introduced himself to readers as a new member of the Gazette's team, describing a background in local news on Salt Spring Island and at the Campbell River Mirror after arriving in the region shortly before the pandemic.

Programming and Content

Municipal coverage is the backbone of the Gazette. Its 18 February 2026 edition reported that Port McNeill's construction and renovation projects in 2025 were valued at more than four times the previous year's total, drawing on the town council's January meeting, and covered the council's debate over a provincial professional-reliance bill that the mayor warned would erode local authority. The 1 April 2026 edition reported a planned $45 million upgrade to the hospital in Port Hardy and carried an account from the area's Member of Parliament of a town hall held in Port McNeill on 16 March that drew nearly one hundred residents to discuss fisheries, forestry, property rights and the cost of living.

The regular mix also includes the Regional District of Mount Waddington, School District 85, the Kwakwaka'wakw communities of the district, court and police news, fishing and forestry industry coverage, minor and school sports — the paper covered events such as the Malakai Flores Memorial Cup pond hockey tournament in Port Hardy in March 2026 — plus obituaries, classifieds and a commentary page open to letters, in which local councillors themselves sometimes take part. Because the district's resource economy runs on public land, the Gazette also carries a steady stream of statutory notices: in December 2025, for example, Mosaic Forest Management's proposed management plan for Tree Farm Licence 47 directed that advertisements be run in the North Island Gazette on two occasions.

Audience and Reach

The Gazette's market is the entire Regional District of Mount Waddington — roughly twelve thousand people in Port Hardy, Port McNeill, Port Alice, Alert Bay, Sointula, Coal Harbour and the surrounding area. The paper's own published description, carried in the Muck Rack media database, says it has a paid circulation of about 2,500 and market penetration of more than 70 per cent in Port Hardy, Port McNeill, Port Alice, Alert Bay, Sointula and other communities along the northern tip of Vancouver Island. Black Press's own media kit, by contrast, lists a weekly print circulation of 826 for the Gazette with 79,504 page views and 6,091 social followers; the kit figures are the publisher's marketing numbers, and the difference between the two sets of figures is best read as a measure of how far print circulation in the district has fallen from its historic levels rather than as audited data.

The paper's masthead offers a one-year home-delivered subscription for $52.50 including GST, bundled with online access. That the Gazette was still advertising in its own pages in April 2026 for a contract driver to deliver papers from Port McNeill and Port Hardy every Wednesday — at $400 per month — is small but telling evidence of a living print distribution operation in a region where many readers have no reliable broadband.

Digital Presence

The Gazette publishes online at northislandgazette.com, where stories appear through the week and where the paper posted staff-compiled results for every municipality in the district on the night of the October 2026 local elections. The website is part of the Black Press network, and the print edition is reproduced in the publisher's pages archive, which holds Gazette editions from 2025 and 2026. The paper maintains a Facebook presence under its own name — its masthead directs readers to "Follow us on Facebook: North Island Gazette" — and Muck Rack keeps a verified listing for the outlet and indexes its stories. Delivery and subscription queries are handled by email through the office address given in the masthead.

Ownership and Organisation

The Gazette is published by Black Press Ltd. and is a member of Black Press Media; it is also a member of the National NewsMedia Council, the industry's press council, as its masthead notes. It was one of the Vancouver Island titles David Black assembled into his community newspaper group, which he founded in 1975 with the purchase of the Williams Lake Tribune. In January 2024 Black Press filed for creditor protection under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act in the B.C. Supreme Court and announced a restructuring sale; the transaction closed on 25 March 2024 with the company sold to Canso Investment Counsel Ltd., Deans Knight Capital Management Ltd. and Carpenter Media Group. Black Press emerged from CCAA protection under that new Canadian-controlled ownership, with David Black retired and Glenn Rogers as chief executive officer. The group reports a print reach of more than 4.5 million readers, 150 daily and weekly newspapers, magazines and websites, and about 1,200 employees in Canada and the United States.

The Gazette's own masthead in its 17 September 2025 edition listed Natasha Griffiths as publisher and sales representative and Marc Kitteringham as editor, with circulation and front-office duties handled from the Port Hardy office; Kitteringham's regional role covers the Gazette, the Campbell River Mirror and the Comox Valley Record. The paper holds Canadian Publications Mail Agreement No. 391275 and acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada in its masthead.

Contact and Availability

The North Island Gazette is published Wednesdays in print and continuously online at northislandgazette.com. Its office is at #3-7053 Market Street, Port Hardy, BC, with mail to Box 458, Port Hardy, BC, V0N 2P0. The office telephone number printed in the masthead is 250-949-6225, and classified advertising can be reached toll-free at 1-855-310-3535. Readers can email the newsroom at editor@northislandgazette.com — the address the paper gives for letters to the editor, contributed stories of about 400 words and freelancer pitches — and can contact the office about delivery and subscriptions at office@northislandgazette.com. Concerns about delivery can also be raised through the circulation department on the office number.