About Wilmot-Tavistock Gazette

Wilmot-Tavistock Gazette

Overview

The Wilmot-Tavistock Gazette is a free weekly community newspaper published on Thursdays for the Township of Wilmot, the Township of Wellesley and the Tavistock area of Oxford County in southwestern Ontario. Its masthead carries the line "Since 1895," inherited from the Tavistock Gazette, and its coverage banner names the communities it serves: New Hamburg, Tavistock, Baden, Wellesley, New Dundee, St. Agatha, Shakespeare, Petersburg, Hickson, Punkeydoodle's Corner and area. The paper is published by Grant Haven Media, the independent Western Ontario newspaper group owned by Stewart Grant, and the Ontario Community Newspapers Association (OCNA) member directory lists the Wilmot-Tavistock Gazette under Grant Haven Media with a circulation of 4,065 copies per edition. It is one of the Grant Haven titles that share the publisher's granthaven.com domain — the reason this row was held for review against the group's Goderich Sun anchor profile. The adjudication is clear: the OCNA directory lists the Gazette as a separate member publication with its own circulation, and the paper has its own editor, its own combined nameplate, its own Thursday edition and its own reporting across three townships, distinct from the Goderich Sun and from every other Grant Haven title.

History

The Gazette's nameplate joins two papers with separate origins. The Tavistock Gazette dates to 1895, as the combined paper's masthead records; its present owner holds one of the oldest preserved copies, an issue of Thursday, June 3, 1897. The paper was long associated with publisher Bill Gladding, who became a fixture of Tavistock journalism before his retirement in 2021. Stewart Grant, who founded Grant Haven Media with his June 2014 purchase of the St. Marys Independent in his hometown of St. Marys, bought the Tavistock Gazette in 2020. In a March 21, 2024 editorial in the Gazette ("Shop Local: Wilmot-Tavistock Gazette dates back to 1895"), Grant explained what followed: through the Tavistock purchase he learned of the decline of the New Hamburg Independent, the Wilmot Township paper, which he said had lost its two-way relationship with New Hamburg and Wilmot Township. With the help of two New Hamburg residents, Lisa Hagen and Nigel Gordijk, he launched a new paper, the Wilmot Post, in October 2020, with Hagen as its first editor — a role the Township of Wilmot itself recognized when it named Hagen a 2025 Citizen of the Year for Culture, crediting her with launching The Wilmot Post, "now Wilmot-Tavistock Gazette," as its first editor. Wellesley-based salesperson Sharon Leis was instrumental in building the Wilmot Post's advertising base. In late 2021 the Wilmot Post and the Tavistock Gazette were merged into the combined Wilmot-Tavistock Gazette, and Gladding retired from the Gazette the same year. Grant included the combined paper among his titles in a November 17, 2023 editorial in another of his papers, the Woodstock Ingersoll Echo, and the Gazette has published weekly on Thursdays since the merger.

Programming and Content

The Gazette covers three municipal councils — Wilmot, Wellesley and East Zorra-Tavistock — together with the Region of Waterloo and the farm, church, school and sports life of its townships. Its March 21, 2024 edition shows the mix: the front page led with Wilmot landowners organizing over a proposed land assembly northeast of New Hamburg, reported by Local Journalism Initiative reporter Lee Griffi, and with a proposed mixed-housing development converting the former B-W Feed mill in downtown New Hamburg, reported by Galen Simmons. The paper's Wilmot land coverage became part of a much larger regional story as the Region of Waterloo's assembly of roughly 700 acres for future development unfolded through 2024 and 2025. Gazette reporting dated 2025 includes Wilmot and Wellesley council delegations on a regional immigration strategy in October 2025, Wellesley's debate over livestream cameras for Applejacks junior hockey games in September 2025, and the rebranding of the Wilmot Family Resource Centre in May 2025. The Township of Wilmot placed statutory notices for its new Official Plan in the Gazette's editions of April 2 and May 7, 2026, confirming both the paper's continuing weekly publication and its role as a newspaper of record. Regular features include February's Heritage Edition and March's Farm Edition — the paper's two biggest issues of the year — "Shop Local" pages, obituaries, church listings under the "Worship in Wilmot" banner, and sports coverage headlined in March 2024 by the New Hamburg Royals' run to the OEHL finals. Contributors include Shakespeare writer Gary West, whose features Grant has praised in print, and features writer Mercedes Kay Gold. Galen Simmons was a finalist in the Health & Wellness category of the OCNA's 2025 Better Newspapers Competition for his Gazette work.

Audience and Reach

The OCNA directory figure of 4,065 copies per edition is a publisher-group figure carried by the industry association's member directory rather than an independently audited number, and it is best read as the scale of the Gazette's print distribution. The Grant Haven model is free pickup: copies are placed at grocery stores, coffee shops, retail stores and community hubs across the coverage area, with paid subscriptions available for mail delivery and each issue published in PDF and flipbook form on the Grant Haven website. The Gazette's readership spans the Township of Wilmot (centred on New Hamburg and Baden), the Township of Wellesley and Tavistock in Oxford County — a combined rural and small-town population of roughly 40,000 people whose municipal business is spread across three councils, two counties and one regional government. Few Ontario community papers cover as many separate municipal tables in a single edition, which is part of the paper's value to readers and to the municipalities that place their statutory notices in it. Grant has written that the model depends on a two-way relationship: local readers supporting local advertisers whose businesses, in turn, sustain the paper — the philosophy behind the Gazette's recurring "Shop Local" pages.

Digital Presence

The Wilmot-Tavistock Gazette's digital home is the shared Grant Haven Media website, granthaven.com; the paper itself directs readers to granthaven.com/wilmot-tavistock-gazette, and its editions are published there in PDF and flipbook form. A complete PDF of the March 21, 2024 edition circulates through that channel and shows the full print product, from the land-assembly front page to the church listings. The Gazette's Local Journalism Initiative reporting also travels beyond the group site: its stories are carried on The Hamilton Spectator's website, which is how Gazette items on Wilmot, Wellesley and East Zorra-Tavistock council business dated May, September and October 2025 are indexed and read online. Because the website is a group platform, the Gazette has no standalone article-driven news site of its own. The granthaven.com domain could not be rendered by the research fetcher used to prepare this profile — as with the other Grant Haven titles, the current digital edition and masthead should be sighted directly at publish time.

Ownership and Organisation

The Wilmot-Tavistock Gazette is owned and published by Grant Haven Media, the independent newspaper company of Stewart Grant. Grant founded the business in June 2014 with the purchase of the St. Marys Independent and has grown it by buying and launching free community weeklies; in a 2026 announcement reported by the Cobourg News Blog he described himself as successfully publishing twelve other newspapers in Western Ontario, a figure larger than the number of individual titles the OCNA directory lists and which may reflect multiple editions. The OCNA directory lists these titles under Grant Haven Media, each separately: the St. Marys Independent, the Woodstock Ingersoll Echo, the Tillsonburg Post, the Simcoe Advocate, the Wilmot-Tavistock Gazette, the Goderich Sun, the Paris Independent and the Stratford Times. The Gazette's editor is Galen Simmons, who is based in nearby Stratford and serves as a regional editor within the group; Lee Griffi has covered East Zorra-Tavistock and Wilmot as a Local Journalism Initiative reporter, and the paper draws on local freelance and citizen contributors, including Gary West of Shakespeare and Mercedes Kay Gold. Grant's March 2024 editorial describes a deliberate staffing philosophy — local residents writing, selling and producing the paper — which he credits for the combined Gazette's viability. The paper is a member of the Ontario Community Newspapers Association.

Contact and Availability

The Wilmot-Tavistock Gazette is published weekly on Thursdays by Grant Haven Media and is available free at pickup locations across New Hamburg, Tavistock, Baden, Wellesley and the surrounding villages, with paid mail subscriptions offered for readers who want home delivery. Its current edition is published in PDF and flipbook form through the publisher's website, granthaven.com. The paper has published its contact routes in its own pages: editor Galen Simmons can be reached at galen@granthaven.com, the group's telephone contact printed in the Gazette is 519-655-2341, and submissions can be left in the paper's drop-box at D&D Homestyle Café, 59 Peel Street, New Hamburg. A direct visual check of granthaven.com at publish time is recommended to confirm the Gazette's current issue, masthead and contact details.