About Parksville Qualicum Beach News

Parksville Qualicum Beach News

Overview

The Parksville Qualicum Beach News, known to readers as the PQB News, is the community newspaper of the Oceanside area of mid-Vancouver Island, British Columbia, covering the City of Parksville, the Town of Qualicum Beach and the surrounding communities of School District 69, including Errington, Coombs, Nanoose Bay, Bowser and Deep Bay. Published by Black Press, it reports on the councils of Parksville and Qualicum Beach, the Oceanside RCMP, schools, health care, tourism and the everyday business of one of Canada's best-known retirement regions.

The paper's actual home on the web is pqbnews.com, the address printed on the front page of every edition; community directories and the BC Geographical Names office likewise record pqbnews.com as the paper's site. Its continuing publication is confirmed by its publisher's digital edition archive, which holds complete editions of the paper dated through 2025 and into 2026, including issues of April 30, 2025, November 5, 2025, December 3, 2025, January 28, 2026, February 4, 2026 and April 1, 2026. Every one of those recent editions in the archive is dated a Wednesday, while the paper historically published twice a week.

History

The News marked its 35th anniversary in October 2017, dating its first edition to 1982. Looking back in that anniversary coverage, the paper recalled how much the region had changed around it: when the News began, the report noted, there was talk of the four-lane highway reaching only as far as Parksville, and Qualicum Beach's town hall stood on the site of today's library. The anniversary package revisited headlines from the paper's early years, including stories carried by the area's earlier News-Advertiser title in the mid-1980s.

The News was not the region's first paper. The British Columbia Geographical Names office catalogues a succession of Parksville-area publications: the Parksville Progress, published from 1948 to 1979; the Arrowsmith Star, from 1975 to 1998; and a News Advertiser that ran from 1983 to 1986. During the 1980s the News itself was published by Island Publishers, a Vancouver Island newspaper company; Reg Cowie, later known for launching the Comox Valley Record, served as the paper's publisher from 1988 to 1990. Media Names & Numbers' 2009 edition still listed the owner as Island Publishers Ltd., with Alison Yesilcimen as publisher, Stephen Heywood as editor and a circulation of 15,988.

By 2013 the paper's own masthead stated it was "published every Tuesday and Thursday by Black Press," and said the News was distributed to more than 15,600 households in District 69. A further consolidation came in March 2015, when Black Press closed the rival Oceanside Star, a paper it had acquired in its exchanges with Glacier Media, leaving the News as the established paper of the Oceanside area. Long-serving staff became local institutions: Peter McCully, who worked in the newsroom, has recalled deadline days at the News offices in downtown Parksville, when reporters hurried to make the presses.

Programming and Content

Municipal government is the paper's bread and butter. Its reporters cover Parksville and Qualicum Beach councils in detail — recent editions have reported on Qualicum Beach's plans to raise water rates and parcel taxes to renew pipes in service since 1973, and on the running dispute between residents and supporters of the Qualicum Beach Airport over aircraft noise, in which thousands of petition signatures have been presented to council. Oceanside RCMP news is a standing feature: the paper publishes the detachment's weekly complaint summaries, which in a single July 2024 week catalogued 304 calls, from scams that cost residents thousands of dollars to vandalism and stolen e-bikes.

Around that core, the News covers School District 69, the region's large tourism industry — including the Parksville Qualicum Beach Tourism Association's outlook for the summer season — and the concerns of a heavily retired readership. The tourism file is a standing beat rather than a seasonal one: reporting Destination BC figures, the paper noted that most travellers to Vancouver Island in 2023 were British Columbia residents, accounting for half of all visitor nights in the region, which helps explain why local businesses courted Canadians staying closer to home in the summer of 2025. The paper also chronicles the area's milestones, such as Parksville's 80th birthday in June 2025 — the city was incorporated on June 19, 1945 — when council invited residents to celebrate with the community. Regular columnists such as Philip Wolf's "Between the Lines" weigh in on local driving habits and community manners, and sports coverage follows local teams from high school basketball to hockey. Features, obituaries, classified advertising and community notices fill out the package.

The airport dispute shows the paper's method on a contested local issue: its December 2025 edition laid out both the petition of nearly 3,000 signatures urging the town to leave the airport alone and the earlier complaints from about 90 residents seeking restrictions on flights, helicopter training and landing fees, noting that the airport was built in 1954, long before the surrounding homes.

Audience and Reach

Parksville had a population of 13,642 and Qualicum Beach 9,303 in the 2021 census, and the paper's reach extends across the rural communities between and around them. The area is one of the oldest communities in Canada by demographics: census-derived data put the share of Qualicum Beach residents aged 65 and over at well over half the town's population, a fact that shapes both the paper's subject matter — health services, housing, accessibility, downsizing — and its loyal print readership. The paper's 2013 masthead claimed distribution to more than 15,600 households in District 69, and directory figures from 2009 put its circulation at 15,988; those dated figures are the most recent audited-style numbers published for the paper.

Digital Presence

The paper publishes continuously online at pqbnews.com and in print, with full editions reproduced in Black Press's digital pages archive. Its online presence is long-standing: the BC Geographical Names office notes the paper has posted its obituaries online since April 2002, and its stories are carried across the Black Press network of Vancouver Island titles and through news-monitoring services that track the PQB News for clients. One transparency note for researchers: this WorldNM inventory record lists the paper's website as south32.com, which is in fact the corporate site of an unrelated mining company; the newspaper's own site has always been pqbnews.com, and readers should use that address.

Ownership and Organisation

The Parksville Qualicum Beach News is published by Black Press, whose masthead appeared on the paper by 2013 and whose digital archive hosts its editions today. Black Press was founded in 1975 by David H. Black and grew into one of Canada's largest community newspaper companies. The company filed for protection under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act on January 15, 2024; its sale to Canso Investment Counsel, Deans Knight Capital Management and Carpenter Media Group was completed on March 25, 2024, and the company emerged from creditor protection Canadian-controlled, with Glenn Rogers as chief executive officer. On Vancouver Island the paper sits within Black Press's community news group alongside titles in Nanaimo, Campbell River, Courtenay, Ladysmith, Lake Cowichan and the Victoria area.

Contact and Availability

The News publishes in print and around the clock online at pqbnews.com. The paper's long-standing main telephone number is 250-248-4341, printed in its mastheads since at least 2009, and its Parksville office was listed at 2A 1209 E. Island Highway, Parksville, B.C., V9P 1R5 in its 2017 edition information. Named reporters seen on recent editions include Michael Briones, who covers Qualicum Beach, and Kevin Forsyth in Parksville. Readers can also reach the newsroom through the contact options on pqbnews.com.