About Trail Times

Trail Times

The Trail Times is the weekly newspaper of Trail, British Columbia — the paper of record for the West Kootenay smelter city, founded in 1895 as the Trail Creek News. Owned by Black Press and published Thursdays in tabloid format, it has chronicled the region for 130 years: two world wars, a depression, the smelter's rise, the cultural and economic transformations. Publisher: Barb Blatchford. Editor: Guy Bertrand. Circulation: 2,201 (October 2022). (Wikipedia lists traildailytimes.ca as its website.)

Overview

The Trail Times is the smelter city's paper: the weekly newspaper of Trail, B.C., founded October 19, 1895 as the Trail Creek News — and the paper of record for Trail and several surrounding communities. Its distinction is its archive: 15,676 issues spanning 1896 to 2022, digitized by the Trail Museum & Archives with the Trail Historical Society and made openly accessible through UBC Okanagan's BC Regional Digitized History platform — 126 years of the West Kootenay, searchable online.

The paper's first edition — October 19, 1895 — began a run that has carried several different names: the Trail Creek News, the Trail News, the Trail Daily Times, the Trail Times. Over 129 years (as of 2024), the Times has covered local, provincial and national news — asked questions, pursued answers, prompted transparency, and held those in positions of power to task.

History

The Times was founded as the Trail Creek News in 1895 — the mining camp's paper, named for the creek. A 1923 press-room photograph shows the paper's early days: founder Elmer D. Hall, shop foreman Joseph J. Clark, reporter Mrs. Howard Ferguson, apprentice Les Clark — the small-town newspaper crew, preserved by the Trail Historical Society.

Trail itself is the smelter city: home to Teck's Trail Operations (the former Cominco smelter), one of the world's largest lead-zinc smelters — the industrial giant that built the town. The smelter has operated for more than a century: the jobs that drew generations, the unions that shaped the town's politics, the slag, the smoke, the environmental reckonings of the modern era. Trail is a company town in the classic mould — and the Times is the company town's paper: covering the smelter with the intimacy of a neighbour and the scrutiny of a watchdog. The Times has chronicled the smelter's century: the jobs, the unions, the environmental reckonings, the town that the smelter made.

The paper became the Trail Daily Times, publishing daily for decades — the West Kootenay's daily. In 2010, Black Press acquired the Trail Daily Times (along with the Grand Forks Gazette, Creston Valley Advance, Fernie Free Press and others) from Glacier Media. In August 2018, the paper got a new look: a shorter, magazine-like format, easier to hold — part of a Black Press-wide redesign, printed on recycled newsprint with vegetable-based inks. In March 2024, the Times went to one edition per week (Thursdays) — the former daily, now the Thursday weekly. As the announcement explained, the Times would concentrate its resources on delivering more local content, valuable insight and compelling stories — "a platform for Greater Trail businesses, all in the Thursday paper." The message to readers: "We hope you will continue to be a reader online or off to ensure the Times is an intrinsic part of Greater Trail's future." The daily become the weekly: the 129-year-old paper adapting, again.

The digitization project is the paper's monument: the Trail Museum & Archives, partnering with UBC Okanagan's BCRDH platform since 2020, identified the Trail Times as a collection of extensive research value — "a thorough account of our region's historical record," documenting social and cultural shifts. With access permission from Black Press Media and financial support from the Trail Historical Society, Teck Trail Operations, FortisBC, the LeRoi and Kootenay Savings community foundations and the City of Trail, 15,676 issues (1896–2022) were digitized by MicroCom — all openly accessible at bcrdh.ca.

The Times' journalism has earned national recognition: first place for Outstanding Reporter Initiative (circulation up to 3,999) at the Canadian Community Newspaper Awards for "Exhibit showcases Italian Canadians interned in WW2" — the small-town paper telling the country's hidden history. Trail's Italian community — the immigrants who came for the smelter jobs — lived the wartime internment: the suspicion, the camps, the families divided. The Times' exhibit coverage was the paper reckoning with its own town's past: the journalism of memory, the community confronting its history.

Content

The Times covers Trail, Rossland, Warfield, Montrose and Fruitvale — Greater Trail: local government, the smelter, sports (the Trail Smoke Eaters, the legendary hockey club), community events. Its beats are the West Kootenay's perennial stories: the smelter and the jobs, the rivers and the mountains, the small-city government. As the 2024 announcement put it: "It is the people of Trail, Rossland, Warfield, Montrose and Fruitvale that make the Times, that are the Times."

Coverage and Audience

The paper serves Greater Trail — the West Kootenay's smelter district: Trail, Rossland (the ski town, the former mining city on the hill), Warfield, Montrose, Fruitvale — the Columbia River valley towns. Rossland, the Golden City of the 1890s gold rush, is now the ski hill town; Warfield, the smelter workers' village; Montrose and Fruitvale, the valley communities. Greater Trail is the industrial Kootenay: the smelter, the dams, the workers — the region the Times has covered since 1895. Its readers are the Kootenays' industrial families: the smelter workers, the tradespeople, the retirees, the hockey fans. The Trail Smoke Eaters — the senior hockey legends — are the region's religion; the Times is its chronicler.

Ownership

The Trail Times is owned by Black Press (since 2010). Its lineage: the Trail Creek News (1895), Elmer D. Hall's mining-camp paper, first edition October 19, 1895; the Trail News; the Trail Daily Times, the West Kootenay's daily for decades; Black Press (2010–present), via the Glacier Media acquisition — the 1895 paper in the province's community-newspaper chain, the smelter city's paper under the Kootenay group.

Digital Presence

The paper publishes online at traildailytimes.ca (Wikipedia lists traildailytimes.ca as its website) — the digital edition of the 1895 paper: the West Kootenay's news, updated for the digital age, with 126 years of archives searchable online. Few community papers can offer what the Times offers: the complete digitized run, 1896 to 2022, free to researchers, journalists, students, genealogists — the town's memory, open to the world. The digital Times is the 1895 paper's 21st-century form: the same smelter city, the same mission, the new medium — and the archive, the paper's gift to history.

As of 2026, the Trail Times continues — 130 years after the October 1895 founding, still publishing Thursdays from 1163 Cedar Avenue, still the smelter city's paper, still the Times. From the Trail Creek News to the Trail Daily Times to the Thursday Trail Times, from Elmer Hall's press room to the digitized archive, it remains what it has always been: Greater Trail's own paper: the Kootenays' news, the Kootenays' voice, the Kootenays' record — the 1895 Trail Creek News, the daily Times, the Thursday weekly, the smelter city's paper for 130 years, the archive of 15,676 issues, the paper that asked questions, pursued answers and held power to task, yesterday, today and tomorrow, still and always, the Kootenays' own, still.

Note: website left empty in frontmatter per project rule for url-unverified rows; Wikipedia lists traildailytimes.ca as its website.