[1] It should be mentioned that Davies is credited as having the first suggestion of the “web” principle of printing, in which newspapers are fed into then-modern presses from large rolls of paper instead of single sheets.

Davies made this suggestion based on calico printing machines from England, with a tool that cuts the paper at a required size, to one of the visiting Hoe brothers at the Globe pressroom.

Further on he would oversee The Spirit Of The Age, a prominent Orangemen focus publication, before returning to the Advance and then on to the Examiner and finally the Barrie Gazette.

A long running theme in the paper was a distinct rivalry with the members of the Orillia Packet, sniping at their editors who had come around town soliciting subscriptions.

The paper historically served the communities of Adjala, Bradford, Bracebridge, Collingwood, East Gwillimbury, Essa, Gravenhurst, Innisfill, Oro, Tossorontio, Ivy, Mono Road, Keenansville, Hawkestone, Stroud, Anten Mills, Thornton, Midhurst, Utopia, Holly, Craighurst, Medonte and Barrie.

The Magnet would start off politically neutral, but by August 1848 had shifted to support the Baldwin Reformers, there already being plenty of literature in Barrie for those of a Tory or Orange Order persuasion.

Samuel Wesley and Robert King stated their continued upholding of the Liberal Conservative tack of the paper and dedication as a family journal of literature, accurate reporting of farmers’ markets, and offering of legal documents from the offices.

Wesley is mentioned in articles about local baseball, Willam Boys’ Central Committee, the Sons of Temperance, and the 1897 Canadian Sessional Papers, speaking on the sleepiness of springtime Black Bass in Lake Simcoe.

The Barrie Advance serves as head office for the Metroland Media Group Simcoe County Division, which includes the Alliston Herald/Courier, Collingwood Connection, Midland Mirror and Orillia Today newspapers.