In 1855, two years before Bradford was incorporated as a village, Mr. Goldie started a newspaper called the Bradford Chronicle.
A few years later, Mr. Goldie sold the paper to Mr. W.B. Donaldson and he changed the name to the South Simcoe Times.
In 1865, the ownership was transferred to Messrs. Porter and Broughton and it became the South Simcoe News.
In 1879, Bradford became a two-newspaper village. This enabled representation to both political parties, namely the Grits and Tories. In that year, Mr. E. Garrett started the Bradford Witness.
In 1882, it seemed a two-newspaper village was impracticable, so the two papers were amalgamated and Mr. Garret became publisher and called the newspaper the Bradford Witness and South Simcoe News.
In 1916, O.M. Seim became owner of the paper. He was publisher until he sold the paper in 1931 to Stewart and Ina MacKenzie.
In 1968, the MacKenzies sold the paper to Gerry Barker.
Gerry ran the Bradford Paper Group until January 1980.
After Gerry Barker quit, there was a lapse, which was filled by Metroland with a publication out of Newmarket.
Donna Purkis launched the Bradford Gazette weekly paper, which also folded in spring of 1991.
The Bradford Times didn’t start up until October 1991, an independent paper. At the same time, Simcoe-York Printing in Beeton also launched the original Bradford Today, which lasted a year. The Times lasted 26 years. The Times was first purchased by Osprey Media and then sold to Sun Media, finally ending up as a Postmedia publication before being sold to Torstar and, unfortunately, closed in 2017. Thanks, Miriam King, for the updates.
This was the info to have the Bradford Witness delivered each week in 1940:
Bradford Witness
Wednesday, May 15th, 1940
$2.00 in advance per annum, $2.50 in U.S.
S.S. MacKenzie proprietor
Go back in time and read what was happening in Bradford.
