About Water Canada

Water Canada

Overview

Water Canada is a Canadian business-to-business magazine and news service devoted entirely to the country's water sector. Published from Toronto, it covers the complete water cycle — drinking water, wastewater and stormwater — together with the infrastructure, technology, policy and people behind Canada's water systems. Its readers are the utility managers, engineers, consultants, technology suppliers, researchers and public officials who plan, build and operate water services across the country.

The magazine appears in bimonthly issues alongside a daily news website, and it anchors two of the sector's best-known annual properties: the Water Canada Awards, which have celebrated the industry's people, projects and technologies since the early 2010s, and the Top 50 Water Projects Report, launched in 2024. For most of its life the title was published by Actual Media Inc.; since the merger announced on November 4, 2025, it has been part of SiteMedia, the industrial-media company formed when Actual Media combined with the construction news service SiteNews, and its About page now names SiteMedia as its publisher.

History

By the publication's own account, Water Canada began its life in 2001 as Water Treatment Dealer, a trade title serving the water treatment industry, and later changed its name to Canadian Water Treatment. Its fiftieth issue, the January/February 2010 edition, saw the debut of its current identity: Water Canada: The Complete Water Magazine. The broader name matched a broader mandate — from treatment products to the full sweep of source water, distribution, collection and reuse.

Under Actual Media, the Toronto media, marketing and events company built around infrastructure, water and environment publishing, Water Canada grew from a print magazine into a multi-platform sector institution. In January 2011 it launched Water's Next, an annual publication recognizing Canadian leadership in water; a second annual edition followed in January 2012, profiling the people, projects, businesses and innovation making a difference to Canada's waterscape. The Water Canada Awards became the sector's annual gala celebration, presented in the early 2020s as part of the Water Canada Summit; the 14th annual awards were handed out on June 8, 2023, at a gala reception in Ottawa held in partnership with the Canadian Water and Wastewater Association, with winners in 11 standard categories plus a Legacy Award honouring Bill Brant, a water and wastewater specialist with more than 45 years in the field. In May 2024 the magazine added a research property, launching its inaugural Top 50 Water Projects Report, showcasing more than $40 billion worth of public water infrastructure projects.

The ownership structure around the magazine changed in 2025. On November 4, 2025, Actual Media merged with SiteNews to form SiteMedia, a group of standalone industrial publications including ReNew Canada, Environment Journal, Waste & Recycling and HAZMAT Management Magazine, with Actual Media's Todd Latham as chairman and SiteNews founder Andrew Hansen as chief executive. Water Canada has continued to publish under its own name within the combined company, and its digital editions now appear on the SiteMedia platform.

Content and Coverage

The magazine and website are organized around the working beats of the water industry: drinking water treatment and distribution, wastewater collection and treatment, stormwater management, water resources and quality, infrastructure funding and delivery, and the technology market that supplies the sector. A typical run of stories in mid-October 2026 included the completion of major rehabilitation work at Saskatchewan's Buffalo Pound Dam, federal support for conservation of northern Ontario forest and peatlands, Alberta's reopening of an agricultural water-use registration program, a Xylem distribution and service hub opening in Toronto, Saskatchewan water projects sharing $74 million in federal-provincial funding, and a partnership between Ducks Unlimited Canada and a craft brewery supporting wetland conservation.

Feature coverage digs into the sector's strategic questions — one October 2026 analysis asked why water is the real bottleneck in Canada's artificial-intelligence boom, while another examined what Canada's holding a fifth of the world's freshwater does and does not guarantee. The magazine's reporting is supplemented by its annual research and recognition franchises: the Top 50 Water Projects Report ranks and profiles the country's largest public water infrastructure undertakings, and Water's Next spotlights the individuals and organizations shaping the sector's future. The Water Canada Awards run a full annual cycle of nominations, finalist announcements and a gala; finalists for the 2026 awards were announced on June 19, 2026, with new municipal categories added that year, and the 2026 event was listed for October 22, 2026, in Toronto.

Audience and Reach

Water Canada's audience is the professional community of the Canadian water sector: municipal and regional utility staff, water and wastewater operators, consulting engineers, equipment and technology suppliers, watershed and conservation authorities, academics and the federal, provincial and municipal officials who fund and regulate water services. The magazine's institutional ties reflect that readership — its 2019 masthead listed memberships in the Canadian Association on Water Quality, the Canadian Water Resources Association, the Ontario Ground Water Association, the Water Environment Association of Ontario and the Water Environment Federation, and its awards are judged with the help of an editorial advisory board drawn from the industry.

No independently audited circulation or traffic figure is published for the magazine, and none is claimed here. The audience figure the publication itself uses, on its own About page, is that more than 35,000 professionals follow Water Canada in print and online — a publisher-stated figure, presented as such.

Digital Presence

Watercanada.net is the publication's hub, carrying daily national, international and Ontario news sections, feature stories and sponsored technical content, which is labelled as such. The current magazine issue — the July/August 2026 edition was the latest at the time of writing — is published in digital form through the SiteMedia group's Paperturn platform, linked from the homepage, and subscriptions are handled through an online subscription service. The title maintains a professional-network presence including a LinkedIn company page, and its social accounts have historically included X, where it posted as @CanadianWater. Its events calendar lists sector gatherings across Canada, from the Yukon Water & Wastewater Workshop in Whitehorse to the National Water and Wastewater Conference.

Ownership and Organisation

Water Canada is published by SiteMedia, the Toronto-based industrial media company formed on November 4, 2025, by the merger of Actual Media Inc. and SiteNews; Actual Media's president Todd Latham became SiteMedia's chairman and SiteNews founder Andrew Hansen its chief executive. Water Canada's own About page describes SiteMedia as "a media company built for industrial leaders" with a roster of seven specialized publications spanning construction, infrastructure, real estate, water, environment, waste and hazardous materials. Jennifer Smith was announced as the magazine's editor in January 2022, and she was the title's media contact as editor in its 2023 awards releases, reachable at the publisher's Toronto number, 416-444-5842; an editorial advisory board drawn from the water industry supports the awards judging and the magazine's coverage.

Contact and Availability

Water Canada is based in Toronto, Ontario, as part of SiteMedia. The magazine is available to its professional readership in print and digital editions by subscription — the 2019 masthead carried ISSN 1715-670X and a Toronto mailing address — with the current digital issue readable through the SiteMedia platform linked at watercanada.net. News, features and the events calendar are free to read on the website, and award nominations, subscriptions and advertising enquiries are directed through the site and the publisher's Toronto office.