About Picton Gazette

Picton Gazette

Overview

The Picton Gazette is a weekly community newspaper serving Picton and all of Prince Edward County, Ontario. First published in 1830 as the Hallowell Free Press, it is described by Watershed Magazine as the oldest weekly newspaper in Canada, and it calls itself the County's newspaper of record. Watershed, in a 2024 feature on the paper, called it "a bit of the soul of Prince Edward County" — a publication that talks by, for and about the community it serves. The Gazette covers Prince Edward County council, local business, agriculture, arts and community life for the County's towns and villages, including Picton, Wellington, Bloomfield, Consecon and Milford. Since 2024 the paper has been owned by Christopher Fanning, a professor of English at Queen's University, and his wife Karen Valihora, a professor at York University, who bought it from the Morrison family and have overseen a redesign, a new office on Picton's Main Street and a switch to County-wide delivery through Canada Post.

History

The Gazette made its debut in 1830 as the Hallowell Free Press in what was then Upper Canada. Hallowell was the settlement on the northwest side of Picton Bay, named after a Loyalist settler from Massachusetts, and the paper took its name from it. A few years later, in 1836, it was rechristened the Picton Gazette. The bound volumes of those early editions — preserved by the paper — contain poetry and serialized short stories on the front page, advertisements for patent remedies, notices concerning runaway apprentices, and wire news such as a June 1, 1860 report of Abraham Lincoln's nomination for the U.S. presidency.

For much of the modern era the Gazette was a Morrison family paper. Earl and Jean Morrison purchased it in 1977; the couple also owned the Napanee Beaver, which they had bought in 1953. Earl Morrison died in 1978, and Jean Morrison ran both papers for decades, refusing offers from newspaper chains, until her death in 2019 at the age of 97. Her adult children continued to run the Gazette, but by the early 2020s, as Watershed Magazine recounted in a 2024 feature, the paper's business side had been neglected for years, advertising revenue was barely keeping the lights on and some of its distribution boxes had disappeared.

Christopher Fanning and Karen Valihora had been part-time County residents since 2017, when they bought a beautiful old farmhouse in Cressy, and had become devoted readers during the pandemic, poring over every issue cover to cover as a way of getting to know the community. They noticed a For Sale sign in the Gazette's window at its old office farther along Main Street, and saw that some of the paper's yellowed distribution boxes had started to disappear. Fearing the paper would die, they bought it in 2024. Both kept their university posts — Fanning teaches English at Queen's, where his scholarly field is the very period in which the Gazette was founded, and Valihora teaches at York; as a student, Valihora had helped run the McGill Daily. The couple, who have five children, three of them at Prince Edward Collegiate Institute, acknowledged the purchase was a leap: "It was naïve. Like, there is no doubt," Valihora told Watershed. Under the new owners, the paper and its website were redesigned with the help of local designer Jed Tallo, advertising rates were raised modestly to strengthen the bottom line, and the office moved to 100 Main Street in Picton. The Gazette's own heritage remains on display in that office, where the leather-bound volumes of the Hallowell Free Press are kept; Fanning, pointing to them, told Watershed: "This newspaper has a heritage. It's an archive, it's a heritage worth preserving."

Programming and Content

The Gazette's pages carry the full record of County life: municipal politics and council decisions, including a May 2026 report by Eleanor Zichy on councillors' rejection of a consultant's report on their pay; development, housing and food-security issues, including reporting on rising food-bank demand; business and hospitality news, such as its March 2025 coverage of a County winery's new restaurant opening for the Countylicious festival; and extensive material for the 2026 municipal election, including candidate responses the paper published in the fall of 2026. The paper's archive functions as the County's memory: an October 2026 analysis of food-bank demand in the County, for example, reached back to a February 2019 Gazette report on a $21,000 food-bank fundraiser to trace how the issue had developed. Photography is a notable strength: Gazette photographer Jason Parks was a finalist in the Best Feature Photo category of the Ontario Community Newspapers Association's 2025 Better Newspapers Competition. The owners have kept a staff of reporters and editors, a mix of full-time and part-time, and say the volume and quality of local writing has been a priority of their tenure. Ad sales follow the County's seasons, running higher in the summer tourist months, as the owners noted in 2024.

Audience and Reach

Under Fanning and Valihora, the Gazette replaced its old distribution method — papers delivered by a driving crew — with direct Canada Post delivery to every residential and commercial mailbox across Prince Edward County. The owners told Watershed Magazine in 2024 that this let them assure advertisers that 14,327 people were actually receiving the paper, with the circulation found in some 15,000 places. The Ontario Community Newspapers Association's member directory lists the Picton Gazette's circulation at 13,531. The Gazette is printed in Montreal; the owners said in 2024 that advertising sales ran to about $10,000 a week, of which about $6,000 went to printing costs.

Digital Presence

The Gazette publishes online at pictongazette.ca, a website redesigned under the current owners in 2024 with local designer Jed Tallo, carrying news, community information and material from the print edition. Its reporting continues to be published through 2025 and 2026, including council coverage in May 2026 and candidate material for the October 2026 municipal election, and its council reporting has also been carried by regional news services such as HR News Canada.

Ownership and Organisation

The Picton Gazette is independently owned by Christopher Fanning and Karen Valihora, who purchased it in 2024 from the children of Earl and Jean Morrison, ending a Morrison family tenure that began in 1977. The owners serve as the paper's publishers while continuing to teach at Queen's University and York University respectively; they said in 2024 that neither had yet drawn pay from the paper. Despite the workload — writing stories and chasing advertising themselves — Valihora described the work to Watershed as exhausting but "actually been a joy," and Fanning emphasized the stewardship involved: "There were many reasons to take it on. And we're so glad we did." The Gazette maintains a staff of reporters, editors and photographers, and is a member of the Ontario Community Newspapers Association.

Contact and Availability

The Picton Gazette is published weekly in Picton, Ontario, from its office at 100 Main Street in the town's downtown, close to Shire Hall, the Prince Edward County municipal building whose council the paper covers week to week. It is delivered by Canada Post to mailboxes across Prince Edward County. The current edition and additional stories are available through its website, pictongazette.ca.