About Valley Voice

Valley Voice

Overview

The Valley Voice is a free, independently owned community newspaper based in New Denver, British Columbia, a village on Slocan Lake in the province's West Kootenay region. Founded in 1992, it is published bi-weekly, and its own masthead has long carried the promise that it is "delivered to every home between Edgewood, Kaslo & South Slocan," describing itself as "your independently owned regional community newspaper serving the Arrow Lakes, Slocan & North Kootenay Lake Valleys." In a 2018 profile, the journalism site J-Source described it as the only newspaper in the Slocan Valley. For more than two decades, from 2003 to 2026, it was owned and run by Dan Nicholson and Jan McMurray as a two-person, locally owned operation. In April 2026 the Castlegar News reported that the paper had been sold to Nikko Snyder of Winlaw, with the sale to close at the end of that month, keeping the Valley Voice in local, independent hands. Its website is valleyvoice.ca.

History

The Valley Voice was founded in New Denver in 1992 by Bonnie Greensword and Katrine Campbell. For its first decade it established the model it still follows: a free newspaper delivered across a wide, sparsely populated coverage area straddling the Slocan Valley, the Arrow Lakes and the north end of Kootenay Lake.

In 2003 the paper changed hands in a transaction that has become a small legend of Canadian community journalism, recounted in Angela Long's 2018 J-Source profile "Rural Media, Kootenay Style." Dan Nicholson and Jan McMurray, who had moved to the Slocan Valley from Vancouver in 1993, wanted to buy the paper and keep it local. Black Press, the large British Columbia community newspaper chain, had offered founder Bonnie Greensword $85,000 for the Voice. Nicholson and McMurray offered $65,000. Greensword, preferring to keep the paper independent and locally owned, proposed that they split the difference, and the couple became the paper's owners. They ran it through Valley Voice Ltd. for the next twenty-three years.

Under Nicholson and McMurray the Voice was a genuine two-person shop, supplemented by contributing writers and mail-room help. Jan McMurray handled writing and administration; Dan Nicholson handled production and graphic design. The owners themselves delivered the paper across its territory, from New Denver to Nakusp, Nelson and Kaslo. A later update in the BC Rural Centre's rural media series recorded the economics of that model in the owners' own terms: each owner drew a salary of $2,000 a month, and the paper made a profit of $10,000. The operation was still recognisably the same in its recent issues: the front page of the February 22, 2012 issue (Volume 21, Number 4) carried a Jan McMurray story on the suspension of a local cedar company's forest licence, and the masthead of the October 10, 2019 issue (Volume 28, Number 20) listed Katrine Campbell, the paper's co-founder, among its reporters alongside Claire Paradis, Barbara Curry Mulcahy and Moe Lyons.

The paper played its community role through the region's emergencies as well as its routines. After the summer 2024 wildfires in the Slocan Valley, the Support Slocan Valley campaign delivered free coffee and $5 vouchers in copies of the Valley Voice to mailboxes in Winlaw, Slocan, Silverton and New Denver, using the paper's universal home delivery as a distribution channel to reach residents.

By the mid-2020s the owners were ready to retire, and the paper's future was in doubt. As reported by Bill Metcalfe in the Castlegar News on Thursday, April 9, 2026, the Valley Voice had been for sale for more than five years, four proposals had come in over that period, and Nicholson and McMurray had said since the fall of 2025 that if no buyer were found by the new year, the paper would close. The buyer was Nikko Snyder of Winlaw, with the sale scheduled to close at the end of April 2026. Snyder had moved to Winlaw five years earlier to take over a family farm, works for the Kootenay Boundary Division of Family Practice, and brought publishing experience from the magazine industry in the early 2000s, followed by a career spent mostly in the non-profit sector. She told the Castlegar News she wanted the paper to help residents share information and find common ground in a time of polarisation. The only major near-term change announced was that the office would move from New Denver to Snyder's home in Winlaw.

Programming and Content

The Valley Voice covers the civic and everyday life of the Slocan and Arrow Lake valleys and the north Kootenay Lake shore: village and regional district councils, schools, health care, forestry and land-use disputes, the environment, arts and culture, sports, letters and community events across New Denver, Silverton, Slocan, Winlaw, Nakusp, Kaslo, Edgewood and the smaller settlements between them. Its front pages show the mix. The February 2012 issue led with the provincial suspension of Meadow Creek Cedar's forest licence, a forestry accountability story reported by Jan McMurray. The October 10, 2019 issue led with health news, the arrival of two new physicians at the Slocan Community Health Centre in New Denver. The July 2, 2020 issue (Volume 29, Number 13) led with local residents in Nakusp, Kaslo and the Slocan Valley joining global marches against racism and police violence, reported with the help of John Boivin, a Local Journalism Initiative reporter based in Nakusp. That blend of council-and-clinic news, resource-industry scrutiny and community celebration, much of it written by local contributors rather than a staff newsroom, is the paper's characteristic content, and its bi-weekly rhythm is built around it: the paper's own mastheads from 2010 through 2020 state "Published bi-weekly," and its volume numbering, Volume 28 by 2019 and Volume 29 by 2020, runs consistently from its 1992 founding.

Audience and Reach

The Valley Voice's audience is the population of the Slocan and Arrow Lake valleys and the North Kootenay Lake shore, delivered not by subscription drives in the first instance but by saturation: the paper is free and is delivered to every home across its coverage area. The paper's own masthead in the issue of October 10, 2019 gives its figures as of that date: a circulation of 7,600 papers, distributed throughout the Slocan and Arrow Lake valleys from South Slocan and Playmor Junction to Edgewood and Kaslo on Kootenay Lake. The same masthead offered paid mail subscriptions for readers outside the delivery area, priced, in 2019, at $54.60 within Canada, $84.00 to the United States and $126.00 overseas, with an e-mail subscription at $22.40, prices including GST, under Canada Post Publications Mail Agreement No. 40021191. Those are the paper's own published figures from 2019 and are presented here as such; no newer circulation figure was published in the sources consulted for this profile. What the figures show, and what later coverage confirms, is a small but complete market hold: in the words of the 2018 J-Source profile, the Valley Voice is the only newspaper in the Slocan Valley, and its delivery route reaches communities too small and too dispersed for daily or chain media.

Digital Presence

The Valley Voice maintains a website at valleyvoice.ca. It is a print-first newspaper: the full print edition is the product, and complete issues have also circulated online through document archives, where issues from 2010, 2012, 2019 and 2020 can be read in full, mastheads included. Directory listings for the paper, including the Slocan Valley's own community directory, keep its New Denver presence current, and regional media continue to treat it as a going concern: its April 2026 sale was covered as community news by the Castlegar News, the neighbouring Black Press paper. Readers who want the Voice itself, however, primarily encounter it the way its readers have since 1992, as a printed paper delivered free to their homes every two weeks.

Ownership and Organisation

The Valley Voice has been independently and locally owned throughout its life. Founded by Bonnie Greensword and Katrine Campbell in 1992, it was bought in 2003 by Dan Nicholson and Jan McMurray and operated by them through Valley Voice Ltd. until 2026. The 2003 purchase famously kept the paper out of chain hands: the founders accepted a compromise price below Black Press's offer in order to keep the Voice independent. In April 2026, as reported by the Castlegar News on April 9, 2026, the paper was sold to Nikko Snyder of Winlaw, with closing scheduled for the end of April 2026. Snyder is the paper's third ownership in thirty-four years, and like her predecessors she is a local resident rather than a chain or an outside investor; her stated intention is to continue the paper as a community forum and to move its office from New Denver to her home in Winlaw. The organisation remains a small one by design: an owner-publisher, contributing writers and community correspondents across the valleys it serves.

Contact and Availability

The Valley Voice is published bi-weekly and delivered free to homes between Edgewood, Kaslo and South Slocan, in the Arrow Lakes, Slocan and North Kootenay Lake valleys of British Columbia. Directory listings give its longtime New Denver address as 406 6th Avenue, New Denver, with the telephone number 1-833-501-1700; the incoming owner announced in April 2026 that the office would move to her home in Winlaw. Its website is valleyvoice.ca. Readers and advertisers should use the contact details published in the paper's own masthead and on its website, which reflect the paper's arrangements under its new ownership.