Publisher's Platform

Two guys with a candy company called OMG's stand nervously pitching their product. Kevin O'Leary ridicules their valuation, and the other guys on the Dragons' Den scoff and bow out. None will put money behind the venture, not even knowing that the two operated and sold a successful company a few years back. The camera pans in on Arlene Dickinson, the only woman on the show and a marketer with cred and clout. O'Leary pokes fun at her tendency to sit back, listen and deliberate while she does exactly that. 

She's funny, she's charming. She's beautiful. She's Canada's iconic television power woman. She'll take half of the company for $250,000, she tells the pair.

It's a fraction of what they're after. But within minutes, they agree that Arlene Dickinson is the perfect partner and she's got half the company.

The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is about the Soviet forced labour system that existed from 1918-1956.   The novel is based on the author's experience of a system he compared to a vast chain of islands known only by those doomed to visit them. In the Gulag, political prisoners accused of crimes against the state endure terrible torture meant to force them to name who they've been associating with and what they've been doing. They struggle to resist naming their friends because to name them is to condemn them. Obviously, this all happened before Facebook and other social media seduced more than a billion people to give over this information away.  

We've published a great new book and are throwing a launch party! Sponsored by LUSH, Hollyhock and SPUD.ca,  you can get your momentum going at the first big bash of 2013.  Two days before the Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel hearings begin in Vancouver, gear up for one of the most pivotal moments in Vancouver's recent history.

The Vancouver Observer's new eBook
Extract: The Pipeline Wars Vol. 1 Enbridge

THE STORY
The controversy about oil sands pipelines has put B. C. on the stage of history and Extract brings you the essence of that debate, including:

Friends of the Vancouver Observer fundraiser last Thursday night brought together the authors, editors, and designer of Extract: The Pipeline Wars, Vol. 1 Enbridge with VO's first monthly sustaining sponsors to celebrate publication of the ebook and a fantastic year of accomplishments. 

• Buy book here

Thank you so much to the generous Vancouver Observer readers who became our first monthly donors.  These sustaining dollars will help provide funding for ongoing reporting on the proposed Nothern Gateway pipeline.  It will also help us cover the proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion as well as other important stories breaking in British Columbia.

We look forward to our next community gathering, January 12, at The HiVE, which will mark the official launch of Extract: The Pipeline Wars and will feature talks and readings by Carrie Saxifrage, Tzeporah Berman,  Andrew Wright who photographed along the proposed Enbridge pipeline route and has many moving stories to tell about what he learned.