The Tyee is thrilled to share its writers have been named finalists for four prizes at the Webster Awards this year. The Webster Awards celebrate excellence in B.C. journalism, and Tyee writers were nominated across four prestigious categories.
Drumroll, please!
Commentator of the Year/City Mic Award
Crawford Kilian has been providing calm, clear commentary rooted in deep reading and expertise for decades, first as an education columnist for the Vancouver Province and then, since 2003, as a contributing editor for The Tyee.
Kilian has a flair for connecting history to current events and brings his deep knowledge to a range of topics, including education, science, the environment, and politics. A college instructor for 41 years, Kilian has published 22 books, including an acclaimed history of early Black settlers in B.C. His closely attended blogging on epidemics and public health has earned him a global reputation and an invitation to address transmissible disease experts in Europe.
Kilian is a finalist for the Webster Awards’ Commentator of the Year/City Mic Award.
Excellence in Environment Reporting
Zoë Yunker’s “Inside the Fiery End of Vancouver Island’s Last Coal Mine” is a finalist in the Excellence in Environmental Reporting category.
In her gripping feature, Yunker chronicles how the owners of Quinsam coal mine abandoned it, left its coal to burn and stuck taxpayers with the fallout.
Collage by andrea bennett. Image of Thomas Clarke via Virginia Tech. Other images via Quinsam Coal Corp. reclamation report.
Yunker’s exhaustive research included days spent combing through inspection reports, bankruptcy filings and historic reports on the mine and its surrounding ecosystems. She interviewed mine and watershed experts in B.C., local advocacy groups and U.S. lawyers who had traced Quinsam Mine owner Thomas Clarke’s bankruptcies south of the border.
Excellence in Community Reporting
In a piece co-published by The Tyee and Castanet Kamloops, Tyler Olsen and Kristen Holliday explored the career of Kamloops Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson, whose 2022 election
sparked lawsuits, prompted an exodus of city staff and generated a deluge of media coverage.
Olsen and Holliday sought to do more than a simple rundown of three years of discord. Olsen spoke to Hamer-Jackson for more than two hours over two separate interviews. Holliday drew on three years of regular news coverage and numerous interviews with Hamer-Jackson and others to bring local expertise.
Photo courtesy of Castanet.
The resulting story, “Mayor of Chaos: How Kamloops Municipal Politics Became Infamous,” is a finalist in the Excellence in Community Reporting category.
Excellence in Feature Reporting
The Tyee’s Northern B.C. reporter, Amanda Follett Hosgood, is a finalist in the Excellence in Feature Reporting category for “The Case of Bella Coola’s Heart-Pounding Home-Built Highway.”
Photo for The Tyee by Amanda Follett Hosgood.
Follett Hosgood’s feature dives into the creation of the precipitously steep gravel road that descends 1,500 metres in elevation from the Chilcotin Plateau to Bella Coola, on B.C.’s central coast.
The backstory of how residents built the Chilcotin-Bella Coola Highway is as unique as the road itself. It’s this backstory Follett Hosgood shares in her piece, which involved delving into newspaper archives, speaking with residents and reviewing historic records, including books and documentary films.
“We’re thrilled that Tyee journalists are being recognized by their peers as being among the best in B.C.,” said Tyee publisher Jeanette Ageson.
“As a non-profit newsroom that is majority reader-supported, it’s a huge point of pride that our team is putting out impactful work that makes waves regularly.”
The winners of the 2026 Webster Awards will be announced at a gala on Nov. 2 in Vancouver.
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