About The Peterborough Examiner

The Peterborough Examiner

The Peterborough Examiner is a daily newspaper published in Peterborough, Ontario, and the only daily newspaper in Peterborough city and county. Started in 1847 — twenty years before Confederation — the paper has published for nearly 180 years through Peterborough's evolution from a lumber and manufacturing town on the Otonabee River into a modern university city and the commercial capital of the Kawarthas. It holds a unique place in Canadian letters: from 1942 to 1955 it was edited by Robertson Davies, the celebrated novelist and man of letters, whose distinctive three-paragraph editorial style won national awards. Owned by Torstar Corporation through Metroland Media Group and published Monday through Saturday. Wikipedia lists thepeterboroughexaminer.com as its website.

Overview

Peterborough — a city of about 85,000 on the Otonabee River, at the heart of the Kawartha Lakes region — is the commercial and institutional capital of east-central Ontario: home to Trent University, the Canadian Canoe Museum, the Trent-Severn Waterway's famous lift locks, and the gateway to the cottage country of the Kawarthas. The Peterborough Examiner is its daily newspaper: the newsroom covers Peterborough city council, the surrounding county municipalities, the courts, health care (including Peterborough Regional Health Centre), education (Trent University, Fleming College), the region's manufacturing heritage, the waterway, the cottage economy and the area's deep sporting culture.

The paper's distinction is twofold: its literary heritage — the Robertson Davies years, when one of Canada's greatest writers edited a small-city daily and made its editorials famous across the country — and its market position as the sole daily in the city and county. Like its sister papers, the Examiner was one of only five papers Torstar chose to keep publishing in the 2017 Postmedia-Torstar swap.

History

The Examiner started circulation in 1847, in the age of the lumber trade: the Otonabee River, the sawmills, the settlers pouring into the back townships. The paper chronicled Peterborough's nineteenth century — the lumber barons, the arrival of the railways, the growth of the manufacturing industries along the river — and its twentieth: the General Electric and Quaker Oats plants that employed generations, the two world wars, the rise of Trent University in the 1960s, and the transformation of the Kawarthas into one of Ontario's great cottage regions.

The paper's most famous chapter began in 1942, when Robertson Davies — then a young writer who would become one of Canada's most celebrated novelists, the author of the Deptford Trilogy and the Cornish Trilogy — became its editor. Davies threw himself into the life of the small-city daily with characteristic gusto, writing not only the famous three-paragraph editorials but also a humorous column under the pen name Samuel Marchbanks, and filling the paper with the erudition, wit and mischief that would later fill his novels. The Marchbanks columns, collected into books, remain among the funniest writing in Canadian journalism. Davies edited the Examiner until 1955, writing editorials in a unique three-paragraph style that won several national awards and made the paper famous far beyond Peterborough. Davies remained owner and publisher of the Examiner, with Ralph Hancox as editor, until 1967, when it was sold to the Thomson chain of newspapers — ending the Davies era and beginning the chain-ownership age. Subsequently Sterling, Hollinger and Sun Media owned the paper before Postmedia.

On November 27, 2017, Postmedia and Torstar announced the transaction in which Postmedia sold seven dailies to Torstar; the Examiner was one of only five acquired papers Torstar chose to keep publishing. It has continued under Torstar's Metroland Media Group; in 2020 Torstar was acquired by NordStar Capital. In the summer of 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the newspaper permanently closed its physical newsroom, with all staff working remotely — a milestone in the industry's transformation. The paper's publisher is Brandon Grosvenor and its managing editor Marcus Tully.

Content and Sections

The modern Examiner is built around Peterborough and the Kawarthas. Peterborough city council anchors the news pages — the paper covers the mayor and council with a dedicated city-hall bureau — extending to the county's eight townships and the surrounding municipalities. The courts beat covers the region's legal community; health reporting follows Peterborough Regional Health Centre; education coverage spans the school boards, Trent University and Fleming College.

The Trent-Severn Waterway — the lift locks, the boating, the tourism — receives sustained attention reflecting the region's identity as the heart of Ontario cottage country. The manufacturing heritage — the GE and Quaker plants, the region's industrial past and its modern employers — is covered in depth. The cottage economy, the lakes, the environment and the region's Indigenous communities (Curve Lake First Nation and Hiawatha First Nation) are constant threads. Sports coverage centres on the OHL's Peterborough Petes — the oldest continuously operating franchise in the OHL, among junior hockey's most storied — Trent Excalibur university athletics, the region's legendary lacrosse tradition (the Peterborough Lakers) and the outdoor life of the Kawarthas. Opinion pages carry editorials, columns and letters from across the region, and feature sections cover arts, food, homes, health and community life.

Coverage and Audience

The Examiner serves Peterborough and the surrounding county — a market of roughly 150,000 people across the city, the townships and the Kawartha Lakes region. Its audience is the region's health-care professionals, educators, university community, manufacturing workers, cottagers and the families of the Kawarthas.

Print circulation was reported at 12,352 on weekdays and 13,108 on Saturdays as of 2011, with weekly circulation of 103,957 in 2013; the paper publishes Monday through Saturday in print with daily digital coverage. The paper's political coverage carries weight at Queen's Park — the region's ridings are closely watched, and the Examiner's reporting on the hospital, the university, the waterway and county government is routinely cited provincially. Its archives, reaching back to 1847, document the lumber age, the manufacturing century and the making of the Kawarthas — including the Davies years, when the paper's editorials were read across the country, and the Marchbanks columns that became Canadian literary classics.

Ownership

The Peterborough Examiner is owned by Torstar Corporation through its Metroland Media Group division, which acquired the paper in the November 27, 2017, transaction with Postmedia. In 2020 Torstar was acquired by NordStar Capital, the private investment firm of Jordan Bitove and Paul Rivett, which pledged to uphold the Atkinson Principles. Within Torstar, the Examiner shares corporate services, national content and digital platforms with the Toronto Star, the Hamilton Spectator, the St. Catharines Standard and the company's other dailies and community papers, while maintaining its Peterborough newsroom — now fully remote — and editorial identity under publisher Brandon Grosvenor and managing editor Marcus Tully.

Digital Presence

Wikipedia lists thepeterboroughexaminer.com as the Examiner's website; the site is a continuously updated news operation: breaking news, council coverage, Petes reporting, opinion, photo galleries and video, optimized for the region's readers. The site runs on Torstar's shared digital infrastructure, offering digital subscriptions, e-edition replicas of the print paper and newsletters.

On social media the Examiner distributes breaking news and community stories to a large Peterborough following. As of 2026, The Peterborough Examiner continues to publish — Monday through Saturday in print, daily online — nearly 180 years after its founding, still the only daily newspaper in Peterborough city and county, and still carrying the literary distinction of the Robertson Davies years.

Note: website left empty in frontmatter per project rule for url-unverified rows; Wikipedia lists thepeterboroughexaminer.com as the paper's website.