If you’ve never heard of The Cornwall Seeker, you’re not alone. It’s a locally-owned newsmagazine out of Cornwall, Ontario — a mid-sized city along the St. Lawrence River, roughly an hour’s drive from both Ottawa and Montreal. It covers community events, local politics, the kind of hyper-local stories that big outlets long ago stopped bothering with. Exactly the sort of publication that rarely gets name-dropped on television.
And yet, there it is — in I’m Also Here, a new six-episode anthology comedy series on Bell Fibe TV1, written for the Cornwall episode by Robin Duke (yes, that Robin Duke — SNL, SCTV, Schitt’s Creek).
The Seeker’s managing editor and publisher Julia Lucio found out about the mention just hours before the February 12th premiere. “Imagine the surprise when we found out, on February 11th, merely hours before the premiere, that we were mentioned in the episode about Cornwall,” she wrote. For a publication that covers council meetings and local festivals, it’s the kind of thing that doesn’t happen — until it does.
What makes it genuinely sweet rather than just a quirky footnote is how The Seeker ended up in the script at all. Duke wasn’t handed a list of Cornwall institutions to tick off. She researched the community herself, looking for details that felt true to the city’s character, and The Seeker fit what she was exploring thematically. According to Lucio, Duke said the publication tied into the episode’s themes of “women gathering, sharing ideas, being creative, and making things.”
There’s an extra wrinkle that Duke apparently didn’t know until after the fact: The Seeker is owned and operated by two women. When Lucio told her, Duke’s reaction was immediate enthusiasm.
It’s a small moment in a larger story about a show that was deliberately built around authenticity — the production team, including Firecracker Department and C’mon Mort Productions, actually road-tripped to each of the six Ontario towns featured before filming began. But for a local newsmagazine that runs on the kind of margins that make most media executives wince, getting woven into a nationally broadcast comedy series as a symbol of community fabric is no small thing.
Lucio put it simply: “For a locally-owned publication, that’s not just a fun Easter egg. It’s a genuine milestone.”
I’m Also Here is currently streaming on Bell Fibe TV1. You can read The Seeker’s own take on the moment directly on their site.
