Thank you for two years

Two years ago the first issue of Monday Morning News was delivered to businesses in town. It was a new publication built upon the desire to do four things: We wanted to bring news about Morinville to Morinville residents interested in reading about their community. We wanted to create a platform whereby local businesses could brand and promote themselves in an affordable fashion in a publication where news wasn’t merely material to fill unsold ad space. We wanted to take part of the profit the publication made and put it back into the community. Not in large one-cause donations, but a little support here, a little support there, always looking to fill the need or make connection between groups where possible. Lastly, we wanted to have some fun.

Over the past two years we have had considerable fun attending events and even hosting a few of our own. We’ve enjoyed hearing your stories and then transmitting them to the community in words and pictures, and we’ve had fun simply being a part of the community we all have chosen to call home.


The publication has changed considerably over the past 104 issues. Originally called Monday Morning News, we shifted our publication day to Wednesday’s earlier this year so we could bring you what happened on the weekend a little sooner. With that change came the name change to The Morinville News, a move that better united the print and online publications under one brand. But more than that – the name change better represented the publication’s focus. We were not going to be another country newspaper that tried to cover every community and hamlet in Sturgeon County. Morinville was growing up and needed a publication to call its own, one the community could engage with.

The print edition started when a reporter, a fire chief, a musician and another guy got together to use news as a way to unite the community and do a little shop local campaigning. The Morinville News would not exist in print today without the arm-twisting and volunteer assistance of Ron Cust, Paul Smith and he who shall remain nameless. And though they have all gone on to their own projects, The Morinville News continues.

While we saw the delivery of news as an important element in the process of community engagement, the reality is we would not be able to publish this news magazine without the financial support of the businesses in and out of this town that have joined us in our vision.
When you see the ads in this and other issues of The Morinville News or on our online daily edition, you may see just another local business pimping their merchandise. Nothing could be further from the truth, for beneath the logos and phone numbers are business and community leaders who recognize it takes a community to build a community news magazine. We are grateful for their continued support that has allowed us to quadruple the size of our publication from that first issue two years ago.

We are equally grateful to our readers who continue to make our publication disappear from newspaper boxes, store shelves, restaurant counters and from our paper carriers each week. Without your interest in knowing what is going on in Morinville there simply would be no need to publish each week.

We thank you all for the continued support.

Stephen Dafoe
Editor, The Morinville News

P.S. I am not Joe Morinville