Gazette still going strong after 130 years

As seen in this recent photo, the Grant Haven Media team has grown substantially over the last five years as owner and publisher Stewart Grant continues to start and support community newspapers across southwestern Ontario, an effort started in earnest following his purchase of the Tavistock Gazette. Jeff Tribe photo

Stewart Grant, Wilmot-Tavistock Gazette Publisher

“People will always want local news.”

It’s something that I say often when I’m asked about the state of the newspaper industry. There’s no doubt that the former Tavistock Gazette, now named the Wilmot-Tavistock Gazette, has stood the test of time thanks to the support of its readers and advertisers.

The Gazette was founded in October 1895 by J. W. Green in Tavistock’s former Commercial Block. In the nearly 130 years that have followed, many different publishers (Frank H. Leslie, Charles Fraser, N.E. Dopp, William Appel, Lorne W. “Chick” Appel, George K. Brown, K. Hart Brown, Robert Gladding, Bill Gladding and I) have kept the tradition going.

As the newspaper industry experienced its greatest changes, the first being to computerization and the second regarding the massive impact of the internet, the Gladding family (Bob and Doris, then the next generation, Bill and Sheri) deserve much credit for keeping the Tavistock Gazette going strong while many newspapers in other communities failed to survive. The Gladding family owned the Gazette for exactly 51 years (1969-2020).

I was honoured when Bill Gladding approached me in 2020 to inquire about my interest in leading the Gazette into the next era, and on July 1 of that year, it became a sister newspaper of the St. Marys Independent which I purchased in 2014.

Getting to know the Tavistock community was a positive feeling that was infectious to me, and thus began a journey of starting newspapers in other communities, starting in New Hamburg with The Wilmot Post in October 2020. In late 2021, we combined the Wilmot and Tavistock newspapers into the Wilmot-Tavistock Gazette that you know today, feeling that readers would appreciate a larger newspaper that incorporated news and stories from throughout these neighbouring areas.

The below photograph, taken last month, shows that our team has grown dramatically in recent years, giving us greater opportunity to provide interesting local content to our readers. Specifically at the Gazette, I’m most grateful to our editor, Galen Simmons, for coordinating each week’s news, to salesperson Sharon Leis for connecting with local businesses, to Lee Griffi for his inspired civic issues coverage, and to Gary West for sharing the interesting personal stories of local families.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the amazing people who make the Gazette what is, and I hope our list of local contributors continues to grow into the future. After all, a community newspaper is at its best when it shares perspectives from a cross-section of the community.

If you would like to contribute to the Gazette, or have ideas on how to improve your local newspaper, please email Galen or myself at galen@granthaven.com or stew@granthaven.com, or call Jen at 519-655-2341. We’d love to hear from you.

From its earliest days in 1895 to the internet age here in 2025, it has been a privilege at the Gazette to serve the community and as we begin this new year, we look forward to continuing the tradition of bringing you interesting local news and information.