After 11 years of bringing you local reporting, the team behind the Vancouver Observer has moved on to Canada's National Observer. You can follow Vancouver culture reporting over there from now on. Thank you for all your support over the years!

Awe-inspiring, epic, powerful... Canada

Hot temperatures. Brutal conflicts. A new publication from ground zero of climate change.

Awe-inspiring, epic, powerful, Canada. Kickstarter. Vancouver Observer

Dear Friends,

There's so much excitement around our office this week, as we near our goal of funding the first year of reporting on The National Observer.

We're only $9,000 away and we have 16 days to go.  Click here to pledge now!

Combing through stacks of journalists' resumes that are coming in to us from all across Canada, I'm struck by the incredible talent that's out there. With all the major media companies in Canada cutting back on their editorial teams, it shouldn't be a surprise, I guess. But I'm nonetheless moved by how many experienced and passionate journalists there are who would so love to be part of an exciting new digital enterprise with a distinctly progressive voice: The National Observer.

With your help, we have so much potential. If we're funded, we will use the money to build our team and do exceptional reporting in Canada this year. We'll fulfill The National Observer's mandate of focusing on energy and environment news and politics.

As an entrepreneur and  journalist, I see so much opportunity in the gap other media have left by not focusing enough on some of Canada's most important stories... the struggles over some of the world's most exquisite wilderness areas and its awe-inspiring coastlines, its rivers that are so powerful they supply our southern neighbors with desperately needed drinking water, its forests, wildlife, its mineral and energy resources.

I look around at what's happening in the world today, and I feel so fortunate to live in such a stable democracy, with such a wonderfully diverse population, in a country with so many natural resources it's tempting to take them for granted.

Our reporting will help to keep important issues front and centre and it will counteract the "out of sight out of mind" predicament that is inevitable in a country with so much territory that is vast and unpopulated.

So whether we're interviewing Justin Trudeau, Thomas Mulcair or questioning Prime Minister Stephen Harper at a press conference, we'll focus on this aspect of Canada's story:  on pipeline projects, industrial development, and on the dramatic face-offs between people and corporations, but also, on what the political parties plan to do to move our federal policy forward, towards a sustainable, prosperous future for our children and grandchildren.

With your support, we can do so much.

We'll hire a fantastic reporter in Ottawa and a second in Toronto, and we'll add another person to our Vancouver team to tell these stories, day by day. Our narratives will chronicle the most important stories of our time, and serve as a mirror that reflects back to us the depth and complexity of the unfolding drama of history in the making.

Please pledge today!

Warmly,
Linda

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