About Our Windsor

Our Windsor

Overview

Our Windsor, published at ourwindsor.ca, is a digital-only community news website for Windsor, Ontario, published by Metroland Media Group. Unlike almost every other title in the Metroland network, it has no print predecessor: it is a digital-native publication, created as part of Metroland's family of "Our"-branded community websites in southwestern Ontario. The site describes its own purpose as giving residents a one-stop shop for local news, events, business information and entertainment — a place to connect with what is going on in the community, follow local news and issues, plan weekends, register for local sports and find detailed business information. It operates in a market whose daily newspaper, the Windsor Star, belongs to Postmedia, which makes Our Windsor the Torstar group's community-news presence in Canada's southernmost city. The site publishes daily and is free to read.

History

Metroland built the "Our" family of websites to carry its community-news model into Ontario markets where it published no weekly newspaper. Metroland's roster of 39 community and daily newspaper sites in the 2010s included Our Windsor alongside its siblings Our London, serving London, and Our Perth, serving Stratford, St. Marys and Listowel, together with the websites of the group's print newspapers. Windsor was a logical target for such an expansion: it is one of Ontario's largest cities, but its newspaper market was held by the Windsor Star, the only daily newspaper in Windsor and Essex County, published by Postmedia. A launch date for ourwindsor.ca is not stated in the sources available for this profile, and none is asserted here; the site was an established part of Metroland's network by the middle of the 2010s.

In that period Our Windsor operated with its own Windsor-based reporting. Its reporter Sean Previl covered the city for the site in the mid-2010s, reporting, for example, on the early success of Higher Limits, Windsor's first medical marijuana vapour lounge, which opened on Ouellette Avenue in the former Venue Music Hall — the kind of street-level community story the site was built to tell. The site's journalism from those years was cited and aggregated by other Windsor media chroniclers alongside the city's radio and independent outlets.

Because Our Windsor was born digital, the upheaval that transformed the rest of the Metroland network in 2023 did not change its format. On September 15, 2023, Metroland filed for protection under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and ceased production of all of its weekly community newspapers, moving them online; Our Windsor, already an online publication, simply continued. It was not a print title transferred in any of the industry's transactions — it is not among the newspapers Torstar sold to Postmedia in November 2017, a transaction that closed papers such as the Northumberland Today and the Norfolk News — and it remains a Metroland property. Metroland's current partnership materials continue to list Windsor among the Ontario communities its community websites serve.

Programming and Content

The site's stated remit covers local news, community events, business information and entertainment for Windsor. In practice, its current daily feed combines Windsor-oriented community coverage with the Ontario-wide service journalism that Metroland produces centrally for its network of community sites. Monitoring of ourwindsor.ca in October 2026 shows the service mix prominently: coverage of the record $90-million Lotto Max jackpot and where Ontario's big prizes were sold; the Ontario weekend gas-price forecast, in which analyst Dan McTeague spoke with Metroland about expected pump prices; advice on winter-tire timing built around Environment Canada's "7 C rule"; reporting of the Maclean's university rankings for 2027 and how Ontario schools fared; food-recall notices covering products sold at major grocery chains; and travel and lifestyle features, from Air Canada's schedule changes to Ontario attractions such as the Halton County Radial Railway. Its October 2026 coverage also framed the fall municipal campaign for Ontario readers, noting that voters were preparing for the municipal elections of October 26, 2026 — Windsor's included, where eleven candidates stood for mayor.

Muck Rack, which monitors the outlet, classifies OurWindsor.ca as a verified local online publication and carries the site's own description of its community mission. The balance of the modern feed — heavy on province-wide consumer and service information, lighter on the city-hall reporting that a staffed daily provides — reflects how Metroland's community websites now operate, with small local operations supported by a central newsroom producing shared content for the whole network.

Audience and Reach

Our Windsor serves the city of Windsor, which had a population of 229,660 in the 2021 census, within a census metropolitan area of 422,630 that also includes Tecumseh, LaSalle, Lakeshore, Amherstburg, Leamington, Kingsville and Essex. Windsor is Canada's principal border city opposite Detroit, Michigan, and its economy and daily life are shaped by the automotive industry and cross-border traffic through the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit–Windsor Tunnel. It is also one of Canada's most diverse cities: in the 2016 census, 27.7 per cent of the city's population was foreign-born, the fourth-highest proportion among Canadian metropolitan areas, and visible minorities made up 25.7 per cent of the population, the highest share in Ontario outside the Greater Toronto Area. In local news, the site competes for attention with the Windsor Star, Postmedia's daily; with CBC Windsor; and with Blackburn Radio's Windsor news operation. No audited traffic figure for ourwindsor.ca is published in the sources used for this profile, and none is asserted here; the site is free to read without a paywall.

Digital Presence

Ourwindsor.ca is the publication's only platform; there has never been a print edition. The site is published by Metroland Media Group and carries the group's standard community-site presentation, updated daily. Like the other Metroland community websites, it carries a dedicated section for Volunteer Success, the registered charity whose partnership with Metroland publishes local volunteer listings and volunteerism stories on the group's sites; the partnership's published list of communities served includes Windsor by name. It is monitored as a current outlet by Muck Rack, whose listings in October 2026 show fresh Ontario content posted on the domain throughout the month, confirming that the site remains in active publication. The "Our" branding distinguishes it within the Metroland network from the sites named for former print newspapers, such as the Guardian, Enterprise and Times titles elsewhere in the group.

Ownership and Organisation

Our Windsor is published by Metroland Media Group Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Torstar Corporation. Metroland was formed in February 1981 from the merger of Metrospan Community Newspapers, a Torstar unit, and Inland Publishing Company, and was combined with CityMedia Group in 2006 to form Metroland Media Group; Torstar itself was acquired by NordStar Capital LP in 2020. Metroland built or acquired a portfolio of online properties alongside its newspapers, and the "Our" websites — Our Windsor, Our London and Our Perth — were its digital community hubs for southwestern Ontario markets. Metroland's head office is in Mississauga, Ontario. On September 15, 2023, Metroland filed under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and ended print production across its community newspaper network, eliminating roughly 60 per cent of the company's jobs; as a digital-native site, Our Windsor was unaffected in format and continued publishing. Its Windsor market counterpart, the Windsor Star, is a separate publication owned by Postmedia and is not connected to this site.

Contact and Availability

Our Windsor is available free of charge online at ourwindsor.ca, where it publishes daily. It has no print edition and no separate subscription product. Its coverage community is the city of Windsor, Ontario, and the wider Windsor–Essex area of southwestern Ontario, on the Canada–United States border across the Detroit River from Detroit, Michigan.