About Vanderhoof Omineca Express

Vanderhoof Omineca Express

Overview

The Vanderhoof Omineca Express is a weekly community newspaper serving Vanderhoof and the Nechako Valley in north-central British Columbia. Published by Black Press from its office on West Columbia Street in Vanderhoof, it appears in print by subscription each week — currently on Thursdays — and publishes news continuously online at ominecaexpress.com, supported by a daily email newsletter. The Express is the current title in an unbroken line of Vanderhoof newspapers stretching back to 1917, and it shares its Vanderhoof production office with its sister paper, the Fort St. James Caledonia Courier. The paper remains in active publication: Black Press's digital edition archive holds its Thursday edition of January 29, 2026, in which the paper announced new subscription rates taking effect February 2, 2026, and described its expanded daily online coverage — clear evidence of a going concern rather than a dormant masthead.

History

Vanderhoof was founded in 1914 as a Grand Trunk Pacific Railway townsite promoted by, and named for, Chicago newspaper publisher Herbert Vanderhoof, and the district municipality was incorporated in 1926. Its first newspaper was the Vanderhoof Herald, published from 1917 to 1920, which was succeeded by the Nechako Chronicle, the town's weekly from 1920 to 1983. The Omineca Express followed in the early 1980s: the Bill Silver Digital Newspaper Archive, maintained by the Vanderhoof Public Library and named for the local historian who preserved the town's weekly newspapers, holds Express issues beginning in 1982, and the paper has carried the community's record since, absorbing the Chronicle's role and much of its memory. The Express's long-running "Back in time" feature republishes items from its predecessors — a 2013 edition, for example, looked back at what the Nechako Chronicle had recorded fifty years earlier — and the archive itself grew out of a weekly history column, "A Look at the Past," that Bill Silver wrote for the Express.

By the early 2010s the Express was published by Black Press Ltd. Its mastheads of that era list Pam Berger as publisher and Cameron Ginn as editor, with the paper appearing every Wednesday from 150 West Columbia Street. Muck Rack's journalist directory more recently listed Aman Parhar as the Express's editor and multimedia journalist, and the paper's 2025 reporting included forestry coverage by Monica Lamb-Yorski. The publication day changed over time: Wednesday editions are documented through the 2010s, while Thursday editions are on record by January 2021 and in Black Press's October 2022 audience figures, and the paper's January 2026 edition is again a Thursday paper.

Programming and Content

The Express covers the civic and economic life of the Nechako Valley: District of Vanderhoof council decisions — the paper regularly carries a column written by Vanderhoof's mayor, including Gerry Thiessen's January 2021 New Year column reviewing the district's housing study, official community plan and cultural centre plans — the forest industry that anchors the local economy — its 2025 coverage included the appointment of a Vanderhoof councillor to the provincial BC Timber Sales review committee — agriculture and the Nechako Valley Exhibition fall fair, the Saik'uz First Nation, education, and the Nechako River and its white sturgeon conservation program, a signature local story centred at Vanderhoof's Nechako White Sturgeon Conservation Centre. Its reporters also cover the surrounding communities; photo coverage credited to the Express has documented Canada Day celebrations in Vanderhoof, Fraser Lake and Fort St. James. The paper benefits from regional reporting arrangements within Black Press: News Media Canada's Local Journalism Initiative documentation describes a reporter based in Smithers covering the Highway 16 communities whose stories appear in the Express and sister papers from Burns Lake to Prince Rupert, focusing on the environment, forestry and mining, land use, transportation and Indigenous issues. Community history remains a distinctive part of the mix through the "Back in time" column drawing on the newspaper archive preserved at the public library.

Audience and Reach

The Express's home community, the District of Vanderhoof, counted 4,346 residents in the 2021 census, and the paper's coverage extends across the surrounding Nechako Valley, an agricultural and forestry region near the geographic centre of British Columbia. Audience figures published by the publisher come from Black Press Media's April 2023 media kit, reporting figures as of October 2022: the Vanderhoof Omineca Express was listed with a Thursday print circulation of 622, 28,135 monthly page views on its website and 2,156 social media followers — modest numbers that reflect the size of its market and the paper's role as a paid local weekly rather than a free distribution product. The paper's own subscription notice, published in its January 29, 2026 edition, set its rates effective February 2, 2026 at $57.00 per year for local subscribers and $75.00 for out-of-town subscribers, with a single-copy price of $1.75 including GST; local subscribers renewing before the change kept the 2025 rate of $52.50. The rates have climbed steadily across the paper's Black Press era: its July 2017 published schedule charged local subscribers $43.50 a year, seniors $37.30 and out-of-area readers $60.15, with a single copy priced at $1.30. In the 2026 notice the paper framed the increase in terms of its local role, telling readers their support helps keep local news "strong, independent, and rooted right here in Vanderhoof & area," and thanking them for making the paper part of their weekly routine.

Digital Presence

The Express publishes online at ominecaexpress.com. In its January 2026 subscription notice the paper told readers that it had "expanded our coverage to include daily online news updates and our popular Morning Alert email newsletter," positioning the website and newsletter as daily companions to the weekly print edition. Complete replicas of the print paper are held in Black Press's online pages archive, which preserves Express editions across many years, including the January 29, 2026 edition. Its stories are also distributed through the wider Black Press digital network and are indexed by news aggregation and monitoring services, which carry Express-branded local reporting — such as its coverage of fires and community events in Vanderhoof — alongside provincial stories from sister titles.

Ownership and Organisation

The Omineca Express is owned by Black Press, the community newspaper group founded in 1975 by David H. Black with the purchase of the Williams Lake Tribune; the Express was documented as a Black Press publication by the early 2010s. Black Press filed for creditor protection under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act on January 15, 2024, and its sale to Canso Investment Counsel, Deans Knight Capital Management and Carpenter Media Group was completed on March 25, 2024. The company emerged Canadian-controlled, headquartered in Surrey, British Columbia, with Glenn Rogers as chief executive officer. The Express is produced within Black Press's northern interior cluster: its Vanderhoof office at 150 West Columbia Street also produces the Fort St. James Caledonia Courier, and the two papers have shared staff and a publication registration — the Express's masthead has carried Serial No. 132934 and membership in the B.C. Press Council. Day-to-day, the paper operates with a small local staff, including an editor-multimedia journalist based in Vanderhoof, supplemented by regional reporters shared along the Highway 16 corridor.

Contact and Availability

The Omineca Express is published weekly in print — currently on Thursdays — and daily online. Its office is at 150 West Columbia Street, Box 1007, Vanderhoof, BC V0J 3A0, and its telephone number, printed in its January 2026 subscription notice, is 250-567-9258; an earlier masthead also listed fax 250-567-2070. Readers and advertisers have been directed to newsroom@ominecaexpress.com and advertising@ominecaexpress.com in the paper's published masthead information. Subscriptions can be arranged through the office or the website, ominecaexpress.com, where the current edition, the Morning Alert newsletter signup and the paper's digital archive are available. Historic issues from 1982 onward can be consulted through the Bill Silver Digital Newspaper Archive at the Vanderhoof Public Library.