By Marianne Wood,
Bruce Peninsula Press
February 2026 marks 35 years of this newspaper covering Lion’s Head. The Tobermory Press published its inaugural issue in May 1988, originally only covering Tobermory.
The February 1991 (shown at right)issue of the press reads:
“By popular request, the Tobermory Press will be expanding to take in news and happenings in Lion’s Head and Eastnor Township.
This will mean a Lion’s Head calendar similar to the Tobermory calendar in this issue, and write-ups of Lion’s Head events and happenings. The press will concentrate on the things that people might not otherwise find out about.
That is the niche that we occupy in Tobermory, and that’s why we started in the first place.
The Wiarton Echo covered only those Tobermory news stories and cultural events that were of interest to the people of Wiarton. The Owen Sound Sun Times covered events and stores that were of interest to the people of Owen Sound.
Nobody cared what was of interest to the people of Tobermory. Important local news stories went unreported, and many cultural events flopped because nobody knew about them.
The Tobermory Press monthly newsletter started in 1988, as a single page. The idea was to cover the news stories nobody else cared about, and to make sure everybody knew about all the dinners, dances and other events that were going on in the community. The people of Tobermory responded enthusiastically, and The Press has grown steadily in both size and circulation.
In recent months we have received a number of requests to cover the same sorts of things for Lion’s Head and Eastnor: the high school, the arena, the churches and church groups, events at the Ferndale and Stokes Bay Community Centres and the Legion and Rotary Hall…
You get the idea. Nothing earth-shaking, just the nuts and bolts of small town living.”
35 years later, not all that much has changed. The Bruce Peninsula Press still has a mandate to publish news, information and opinion relevant to life in Northern Bruce Peninsula.
We leave out the provincial and federal news to make room for the stuff that no one else covers. We want to see pictures of local kids playing local sports, local seniors enjoying local community events, local reporters following our local council, you get the idea.
Rummaging through the oldest archives of the Bruce Peninsula Press is a glimpse into the past. We hope to someday have all the issues back to 1988 online for the community to sift through – but for now, archives dating back to January 2010 can be found at brucepeninsulapress.com/category/archives/
