In an era with no radio or television, newspapers did much more than bring people news of the day. A good part of Le Progrès was devoted every week to various forms of entertainment: jokes, stories, poems, puzzles and games. Many of these items were lifted from other sources, often with no attribution. Others were created by staff at le Progrès - no doubt by the Pacaud brothers themselves - or were contributions from members of the literary, cultural and political circle of friends surrounding the Pacaud family back in Quebec. Aside from being popular with the readership, these items helped fill out and even add pages to Le Progrès.

Poetry occupied a prominent place in Le Progrès and the newspaper featured several well-known poets. For example, the renowned Quebec writer Louis Fréchette, friend of the Pacaud family, appeared frequently in Le Progrès, , .

Pamphile Le May, another Quebec writer with Liberal ties was also often featured .
The great European masters, like Victor Hugo, also graced the pages of Le Progrès with their presence , . At the same time as Le Progrès tried to elevate the local population by exposing it to contemporary literary masterpieces, it also endeavoured to give voice to local bards, most of whom seemed to wish to remain anonymous. A certain A.J.A from Comber and a Windsor poet known only as M... C... made valiant efforts to scale the poetic heights, striving to breathe the same rarified air as their more famous brethren , .

Not all reading material in Le Progrès was of this lofty nature. For more prosaic tastes, Le Progrès ran weekly instalments of serialized novels. These stories, usually featuring a damsel in distress, were designed to lure readers back week after week with a heady mix of action and melodrama. Here are the first instalments of three of the serials to appear in Le Progrès , , .

Le Progrès also kept its readers amused with a steady supply comic pieces, some of them offering advice , , , more or less useful trivia , , , , or tongue-in-cheek social commentary , , , . Humour was an important part of Le Progrès’s appeal. The newspaper seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of jokes and comic dialogues that appeared in regular columns like “Pour rire” (“For laughs”) and “Cueillette” (“Gatherings”): , , , , , . Comic strips, however, so essential to modern newspapers, were only in their infancy at this time, as can be seen by this rare example, “The Bulldog and the Bicycle,” from 1896 . On the other hand, word games, tongue-twisters and other linguistic diversions were very popular , , . The same can be said for puzzles based on mathematical paradoxes , .

Le Progrès truly had something for everyone.