About Wainwright Star

Wainwright Star

Overview

The Wainwright Star is the community newspaper of Wainwright, Alberta, published by Star News Inc. from offices on 3rd Avenue in the town. Tracing its lineage to The Wainwright Star of 1908, the paper is one of the long-established weeklies of east-central Alberta, serving Wainwright and the surrounding district of farms, villages and the Canadian Forces Base Wainwright community. For most of its modern life it has published under the name Wainwright Star Chronicle, and its publisher today presents its news under the combined Star/Edge branding — the Alberta Weekly Newspapers Association lists the outlet as "Wainwright Star/Edge," and its website publishes local reporting under the "Star Edge News" masthead.

History

The weekly Wainwright Star began in 1908 with James Hossack Woods as owner and H. E. Cummer as editor, according to the Alberta Genealogical Society's summary of the Peel's Prairie Provinces newspaper records. The University of Alberta's Peel collection preserves more than 2,000 issues of The Wainwright Star from 1908 to 1949. In January 1949 the Star amalgamated with the Chauvin Chronicle to form the Wainwright Star Chronicle, published by Leonard D'Albertanson Jr.; the Star Chronicle was sold in 1970 and continued as the town's paper.

The paper's heritage is unusually well preserved. The Wainwright Public Library has digitized one hundred years of the Wainwright Star Chronicle, from 1908 to 2008, in a free, keyword-searchable database with date filters, giving the community an accessible archive of its own history as recorded week by week. In the autumn of 2008, Star News Inc. celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Wainwright Star Chronicle, marking the milestone in the same year the Town of Wainwright celebrated its own centennial; as part of the paper's birthday, Star News gave away $10,000 in a contest for its readers.

Through much of this era the paper was guided by publisher Roger Holmes, who received the Alberta Weekly Newspapers Association's Bill Draayer Award in 2002 and earned industry awards in editorial, photography and advertising design. The Star Chronicle was not only a newspaper but also a print shop, and Holmes was known for leading tours of schoolchildren and visitors through the operation. His attachment to the trade was generational: his grandfather Ed Holmes, a first-generation newspaper editor, is quoted in the family as holding "that there is no more a free or congenial life than that of a rural weekly editor." In 1985, future Tofield Mercury publisher Kerry Anderson was briefly a partner in the Wainwright Star Chronicle, with Gordon and Monte Keith, before building his own east-central Alberta group.

The mid-century Star Chronicle presented itself on its masthead as "a progressive weekly newspaper serving a progressive area." Archived issues show the paper publishing on Wednesdays — the editions of November 24, 1948 and February 25, 1953 both fall on that day — with a subscription price of $2.00 a year in 1948, rising to $2.50 in Canada by 1953. Its earliest pages, preserved in the Peel collection, were already chronicling the buffalo and elk herds of the nearby Buffalo National Park, established just outside the new town in the same era in which the paper was founded; the issue of April 24, 1929 carried the volume number XXI, consistent with the 1908 start.

By 2008 Star News Inc. was publishing three weekly publications in Wainwright — the Wainwright Star Chronicle, the Wainwright Review and the Wainwright EDGE — and that year Kelly Clemmer was promoted from associate editor to editor-in-chief of all three. A 2013 periodical directory still listed Star News Inc. at 1027 – 3rd Avenue, Wainwright, with Clemmer as editor-in-chief. The newsroom also served as a training ground beyond Alberta: Star News reporter Derek Kilbourn left in 2008 to purchase his own publication, the Gabriola Sounder on British Columbia's Gulf Islands, carrying the Wainwright weekly tradition — Kilbourn is part of the Holmes newspaper family — to the West Coast.

Programming and Content

The Star's pages carry the full range of small-city Alberta journalism: town and municipal district council news, school and school-board coverage, agricultural reporting, business news, editorials, obituaries and extensive local sports. Its recent online reporting illustrates the mix: coverage of the Wainwright Stampede chuckwagon races, the town's minor lacrosse and soccer tournaments, the groundbreaking of a new elementary school in May 2025, a $15,000 grant to the Wainwright Museum, Canada Day celebrations at CFB Wainwright's Fish Pond, and village events in neighbouring Edgerton, whose Sports Days and Bullarama the paper covered in July 2025. National political figures passing through the district — the paper reported on a visit by Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and MP Damien Kurek to the Wainwright Stampede — are covered from the local angle, as are the visits of provincial leaders to nearby communities.

The military presence is a recurring theme: CFB Wainwright, one of the Canadian Army's principal training bases, sits at the edge of town, and its community events, ceremonies and relationship with the town form a regular part of the paper's news file.

Audience and Reach

The Star serves Wainwright and the Municipal District of Wainwright, a farming and military community in east-central Alberta near the Saskatchewan border, together with surrounding villages such as Edgerton and Chauvin — the latter a partner in the paper's identity since the 1949 amalgamation. A 2013 industry directory recorded a CMCA-audited circulation of 6,983 for the Wainwright Star, a figure that reflects the paper's penetration of its district at that time; it is presented here as a dated, audited snapshot rather than a current figure. The paper's contemporary audience is reached both through its print edition and through continuing online publication at starnews.ca, where its local stories are indexed by journalism databases under the Star Edge News name, with reporters including Carrie Chisholm and Rod Oracheski filing district news through 2025.

Digital Presence

The paper's website is starnews.ca, which publishes local news under the Star Edge News branding. The site carries community news, sports and event coverage from Wainwright and its district, and its articles from 2025 — covering events from May through July of that year, including the Wainwright Stampede, Canada Day at the base and Edgerton's centennial-scale Sports Days — confirm the newsroom's continuing operation. The historic archive is separately available through the Wainwright Public Library's digitization of the Star Chronicle's first century.

Ownership and Organisation

The Wainwright Star is published by Star News Inc., an independent, locally based newspaper company in Wainwright. The company historically combined newspaper publishing with a commercial print shop at its 3rd Avenue office. Its leadership has been drawn from the Alberta weekly industry: publisher Roger Holmes was a prominent figure in the Alberta Weekly Newspapers Association, and editor-in-chief Kelly Clemmer, an International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors member, was promoted to lead the company's three weeklies in 2008 and remained listed in the role in industry directories into the 2010s. The company is a member of the Alberta Weekly Newspapers Association, whose current member listing carries the outlet as "Wainwright Star/Edge."

Contact and Availability

The Wainwright Star is published in Wainwright, Alberta, by Star News Inc. Industry directories have listed the company's office at 1027 – 3rd Avenue, Wainwright, Alberta, telephone (780) 842-4465. The paper's current news appears online at starnews.ca under the Star Edge News masthead, and its historic editions from 1908 onward can be searched free of charge through the Wainwright Public Library's digital archive.