MORRISBURG – This year’s top-five online news stories are a good indication that education stories are important to readers of The Leader. Three of the top five stories that drew readers to morrisburgleader.ca involve education.
The fifth-highest viewed story on The Leader’s website is the re-election of Stormont-Dundas-South Glengarry MPP Nolan Quinn. A snap provincial election called by Premier Doug Ford resulted in Quinn and 78 other MPPs from the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario forming a majority government. Ford called the election seeking a “Strong Mandate” to deal with tariff issues caused by U.S. President Donald Trump. The February 27 vote resulted in Ford having the same number of MPPs as when he dissolved the house five weeks prior. Quinn was elected for his second term. Prior to the election, he was served as Minister of Colleges and Universities—a role he continues to serve in cabinet still.
The fourth most-viewed story this year is our May 14 story on the proposed French-Catholic elementary school for Winchester. The Conseil scolaire de district catholique de l’Est ontarien has proposed a new elementary school in that community, which would serve North and South Dundas. According to Statistics Canada, 523 students in North Dundas and about 250 students in South Dundas are eligible for French language Catholic school education. The board has recently opened new elementary schools in Limoges, Casselman, and North Lancaster. The CSDCEO has applied to the Ministry of Education to fund construction of the new school.
Our third most viewed story on The Leader’s website involves a proposed bell-time change by the Upper Canada District School Board, and its co-terminous partner, the Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario saying no. The UCDSB proposed flipping the secondary and elementary school start times citing studies about the effects on learning and students having a lack of quality sleep. In order for that time change to go through, the board had to get the CDSBEO to agree as they share ownership of a transportation consortium that buses a majority of the combined nearly 45,000 students to school. After two years of trying, the CDSBEO finally gave a definitive answer to the UCDSB’s request—no. In order for the English-Public board to continue with its plan to flip the start times, it would have to spend an additional $2 million on bus transportation — a challenge considering bus companies already had difficulty finding enough drivers for the current routes.
The second most-viewed story on our website in 2025 was the groundbreaking of the $170 million Merkley Oaks subdivision in Iroquois. Builder Valecraft Homes is building 313 mixed housing units including detached, semi-detached, townhouses, and even rental apartments. Ground work was carried out throughout the winter and into this past summer. Now the project is well underway with at least 10 buildings under construction as of December 28. It is the largest housing development built in Iroquois and South Dundas since the St. Lawrence Seaway construction in the 1950s.
Education is the topic of our top story online in 2025 and it began in January. The UCDSB announced that network issues at its schools were the result of an extensive data breach that was discovered just after Christmas. The breach occurred the same general time frame as when thousands of schools in Canada and the U.S. were reporting data breaches due to a hack of software provider PowerSchool. The UCDSB hack was not related to PowerSchool, and compromised the data of all students who had attended UCDSB schools since 2010, employees past and present going back to 1999, and bursary award winners from 2001 to 2024. The board was providing credit monitoring to some of the affected students. Data exposed included addresses, financial information, and other student data.
In what has been an ongoing honourable mention for top news stories online each year, our feature on Williamsburg-native Brian McCourt’s then-new in 2017 HGTV show Backyard Builds was the 10th most-viewed story on The Leader in 2025. The show, which McCourt co-stars with designer Sarah Keenleyside, finished its latest season on Home Network this past summer. This is the ninth-year the story on McCourt from 2017 has been in our top-10.
The most-viewed online sports story is the $8,500 donation to local soccer club, South Dundas United. That donation from the Port of Johnstown completed a $33,000, three year fundraising effort by the club to replace the aging soccer goals at the South Dundas Soccer fields in Iroquois.
In entertainment, the highest-viewed story on The Leader’s website was the May 7 review of Steven Page at the St. Lawrence Acoustic Stage. The former Barenaked Ladies front-man closed out the 2024-25 season for the organization.
Our highest-viewed editorial of 2025 was a sad one for the community and especially here at The Leader. Our October 15 editorial paying tribute to our arts and entertainment journalist Wendy Gibb also the seventh-most viewed article on our website. Gibb was a long-time teacher at Seaway District High School, teaching English, Drama, and History. On her retirement, she started working for The Leader and reported for 20 years all the arts and culture that went on in South Dundas and beyond. This editorial was special as it included many of the kind things people in the community said about Gibb during her teaching and reporting careers, and the impact she made through her many volunteering activities.
Viewer-ship statistics were verified on December 29, 2025 using server-based statistics reporting from The Leader’s webhost.
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