Ten years ago, I hit publish on a Kickstarter called “Reports from the Energy Battlegrounds” to raise the first funds for Canada’s National Observer. A small group of us stood in our cramped office in Vancouver’s Dominion Building — the one we called “The Save the World Building” or, on darker days, “The Building of Lost Causes” — and cheered as the campaign went live.

Our tagline: “Hot temperatures. Brutal conflicts. From ground zero of climate change, a new publication.” Grimes gave us her music for the campaign video. 574 readers I’d never met pledged over $80,000 because they believed the stories we wanted to tell were urgent. Kickstarter named it a “Project We Love.”

I had no idea I was taking the first step toward something that would change my life so profoundly, something that would grow so far beyond me and have value to so many.

Now, as we stand at the threshold of the next ten years, I’m asking you to help us reach our most ambitious goal yet: $250,000 by year’s end to support the Climate Solutions Reporting Project. But before I tell you about where we’re going, let me take you back to where it all truly began.

The real beginning came even earlier, at my dining room table.

That table was Vancouver Observer’s first newsroom. It’s where a young journalism graduate helped me uncover the Koch brothers quietly funneling over a million dollars to shape Canadian politics.

And it’s where I sat after the 2013 Healing Walk in Fort McMurray, trying to make sense of what I’d witnessed: an Indigenous elder’s heart-wrenching sobs at the edge of a toxic tailings pond, her grief silencing 400 people who had come from across Canada to bear witness. Bill McKibben had called the tar sands “the fuse of the carbon bomb.” Naomi Klein named it “the black hole at the centre of our country.” But it was that woman’s tears that changed something in me.

I wasn’t an environmentalist when I started this work. I’d spent my career focused on human rights. But standing at those tailings ponds, I saw it: public health, Indigenous rights, environmental justice and the future we were leaving our children — it was all one story. It was an epic story, I thought. And almost no one in Canadian media was telling it from the point of view of the people most impacted. Not back then.

So we did.

Early on, when we faced attacks meant to discredit us, Sandy Garossino — a former Crown prosecutor — gave me words I’ve never forgotten: “If you are brave, people will rally around you. Be brave.” She was right.

Over the next ten years, we’d win more than 60 journalism awards, become the first digital-only publication to receive a National Newspaper Award, and build tools like Civic Searchlight that are now used by hundreds of journalists across the country.

One afternoon, a young reporter walked into my office and laid a dossier on my desk. Her hands were trembling. “When people protest these mines, they vanish,” she said. “Or worse.” Community organizers disappeared. Indigenous leaders shot dead. A teacher’s body was found in a ditch. The companies behind these mines traded freely on the Toronto Stock Exchange, their shares nestled in Canadian pension funds. No one else would touch the story. We did.

I remember sailing through the Great Bear Rainforest, watching whales breach in waters that pipeline companies saw only as a shipping lane. A friend pulled me aside as the sun set over the mountains. “I want to invest in you going further,” she said. “$25,000.” When I asked her why, she spoke of her two children. “I worry about their future.” All around us, the natural world spoke to what was at stake.

Now we’re at the threshold of the next ten years.

Every year since CNO launched, I’ve fought for our survival and I’ve come to you, again and again, to ask for your support. To those of you who have been by my side since the beginning, I’m so grateful. To those of you who are newer to our community, it’s such a wonderful thing to get to know you in any way I can.

I try to treat every year we’re in business as if it may be our last. I encourage our reporters to do the same, using their time to do the most important stories they can imagine. Our team is growing in expertise and even though they are young, they are wise and talented and blow me away all the time. I feel so privileged to be part of this team. It is my job now to ensure that this team has the support they need to continue to produce with excellence, encouragement and appreciation for their efforts.

When the Canadian Media Guild stated that CNO is “one of the few media start-ups” offering comprehensive benefits to journalists, it made me feel so proud of the organization we’ve created, together — you and all of us contributing with the capacities we have.

**We now collaborate with I-SEA to produce journalism for the Climate Solutions Reporting Project. CSRP funds 50% of CNO’s reporting, and that’s made possible because of donors like you. We can’t do this work without you. **

Please help me ensure that we make our most ambitious goal to support the Climate Solutions Reporting Project: $250,000 by year’s end.

I keep coming back to where this all started.

Ten years ago, I sat at my dining room table wondering if a small team of determined journalists could make a difference.

They did.

And you have my word, if we make our goal for CSRP, we will go further in making an impact. Together with you, we will continue to produce journalism that our democracy and our climate needs — and that our future depends upon