We were recently thrilled to hire Brenna Temple as a full time senior writer!
Overqualified for the position with 2 journalism diplomas (1 from Langara and another from BCIT) as well as a bachelor's degree in communications from Royal Roads, and years of experience, we're incredibly lucky to have lured her over from one of our competitors to take a position with our growing publication.
Her first piece we published - "Why I Love Yaletown: On Being Fancy/Poor and Other Things" - garnered about as much attention as I imagined it might. Mostly negative in terms of comments, but some positive.
Brenna Temple. Photo Jose Reyes.
Brenna pitched me on writing a piece about what she loves about her neighbourhood of Yaletown and I figured it would be a great launch pad for a series profiling all of the different neighbourhoods in Vancouver, written by people who live in them.
What better way to kick off than with a love letter to the most divisive assemblage of condos, small doggos and nice smelling people in Western Canada? And to have someone who lives the ethos of the neighbourhood explain why? People love the place and its people or they passionately hate it and them; there seems to be no little indifference.
Brenna obviously falls into the former category and while I don't agree with all of the reasons she thinks her neighbourhood is great it's her opinion piece. As Editor in Chief it's not my job to censor or rewrite op-eds; I get them out there to our readers who can then discuss them (AND DISCUSS THIS ONE YOU DID).
When she finished writing the piece she sent it over to me and watched as I read it at my desk, just a few feet from hers. I laughed out loud at some of the points she made in it, and she seemed to get joy out of my reactions. She knows she's a shit disturber and some of what she wrote is tongue-in-cheek but it isn't satire, as some people suspected.
Brenna loves her neighbourhood. She's her own person, she's not out to save the world and while you may not agree with her views or the reasons she's into Yaletown, she's just one of hundreds of thousands of voices in our city.
V.I.A. has always been an accepting space where we've shared opinions from a broad range of residents with different views. We're not here to serve one type; we're here for all of you who love your city.
And of course we're not perfect. The piece could have used more than my quick eye on an edit, and as some pointed out the image of the girl (below) isn't actually in Yaletown. None of the photos are. I should have caught that as well, and worked to make the piece better before the dog pile of comments started.
Not Yaletown. Photo @brookecagle/Unsplash
A lot of readers commented on our Facebook Post and tweeted to us, saying the piece was "garbage" and all sorts of swears I won't repeat here, and everyone is certainly entitled to their opinion. However the most interesting thing to me was when local media started to tweet about it.
My friend James Keller from the Globe and Mail seemed to be baffled. He shared this:
https://twitter.com/ByJamesKeller/status/931256529705144320
A Vice contributor thought it would be good to call it "dog shit":
https://twitter.com/Lon_Monster/status/931326063996579840
Peter Meiszner of the real estate publication UrbanYVR (formerly of Global) got a laugh out of it:
https://twitter.com/PeterMeiszner/status/930843688699228160
Justin McElroy from CBC had his suspicions:
I'm not ruling out the possibility this is an elaborate practical joke by @BobKronbauer to trigger folks like me
— Justin McElroy (@j_mcelroy) November 15, 2017
Even though we've published one piece (heck, ten or twenty pieces) that you may not agree with we're the same V.I.A. you've always known and loved, and as we grow we're inviting more voices in. I promise you that over the coming years we'll continue to bring you features showcasing the reasons you (and others) love your city, while also pointing out some things that might need improvement, and we'll keep you up to speed on local news you should know. For free.
You may not always be on side with everything we publish, and you're not supposed to. But rest assured that we're just as dedicated to furthering the awesomeness of this city as we were when we launched on Valentine's Day 10 years ago; an ongoing love letter to Vancouver.
Thanks for reading.
