He died of ill health in 1926, his son carried on until his death in 1928; William Smallfield Jr's section ends mid-sentence.

Young Robertson Davies, later a prominent Canadian author of fiction, said in interviews that he grew up expecting the unexpected, with a "sense of ordinary people, extraordinary lives", thanks to his father's position.

At the age of nine he was paid for a contribution published in the Mercury; a review of a lecture on Shakespeare at the local Methodist Church.

[6] Robertson found himself "terribly oppressed" in the town,[7] basing the childhood adversity of Francis Cornish in What's Bred in the Bone on Renfrew and its people.

[10][11] Davies sold the paper and other property in Renfrew to E. Roy Sayles of Toronto, in 1925, of the Canadian Weekly Newspapers Association.

[3] Sayles remained prominent in the industry, acting as a delegate to the British Empire Press Union Conference in 1930.

Norman Wilson began as a printing apprentice at the paper in 1954, doing photography in 1958, moving on to reporting until the Mercury and Advance merged.