About Us
The St. Croix Printing & Publishing Company, Limited Established October 1865
It was a moment of optimism and fear at the same time. The year of 1865 saw the Civil War end on the American side of the border, and fear of Irish nationalist raiders on the New Brunswick side of the line. Stories circulated of 30,000 Fenians preparing to invade this area, and the towns of St. Stephen and St. Andrews prepared for the worst. Militia drilled daily, and regular troops were brought to the region to help in the defence.
October, 1865 - This was the month David Main left the northern part of New Brunswick and came to set up a press he had purchased from the recently failed Calais, Maine-based St. Croix Herald. He began publishing The Saint Croix Courier from a small building on Water Street in St. Stephen. As well as producing a weekly newspaper, Main ran a bookstore and operated a printing business.
By the turn of the century, St. Croix Printing & Publishingıs world had changed beyond recognition. The company had its ups and downs, and had made it through a fire in 1877, which began in the stable of the famed chocolate company, Ganong's. The company survived a bad economic slump in the 1880s and bounced back in the mid-1890s with a new innovation to be produced by its presses, half-tone photographs.
In World War I, The Saint Croix Courier told the tales from the trenches. We reported about the draft dodgers heading across the border into Maine. They were called "Skedaddlers." Without radio, the newspaper is the principle source of war news and the presses continued to produce the much anticipated weekly newspaper. To speed up the printing operation, the company had two linotype machines, and a more efficient "Duplex" press added to its operation. The paper passes under one plate, then over another.
The company meets the new world of the roaring '20s and depression '30s with a new family in ownership, the Granvilles. The company continued to operate from its King Street location until 1977 when it moved to its present location on Milltown Boulevard. At the same time, we added a new press. The flatbed press, used since 1925, made way for a five-unit Goss Community Press using the offset process and adding new sparkle to the region's newspaper.
A decade later, St. Croix Printing & Publishing changed ownership in 1987 when a group of forward thinking employees got together and purchased the business from the Granville family. It operated this way until 2002, when a deal was struck with the Murray family of Pictou, N.S., to join the Advocate Printing & Publishing group.
We continue to service our many printing clients from our location on the St. Stephen, N.B. Calais, Me. border. We employ a staff of 20 full-time and 5 part-time individuals. We offer a full range of commercial printing as well as web offset. We also have a five pocket Muller Martini stitcher, which is one of a very few available in our area.
The St. Croix Printing & Publishing Company, Limited has earned a reputation as a progressive company which offers quality printing and excellent customer service to our clients in Atlantic Canada as well as the State of Maine in the U.S. The company has been a mainstay in our community for the past 140 years and continues to operate with the same values and attention to detail in meeting our customer's needs.
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