Ways to Support Our Growing Bird’s Eye Nest

After nine months at the helm as editor, Melissa McKinney purchased the Bird’s Eye on January 1, 2026. Within three weeks, she found herself navigating three enormous changes at once: owning a newspaper, profound grief following a profound loss, and a broken ankle that quite literally stopped her in her tracks. In those first difficult months, becoming the latest steward of this little paper became a lifeline back to her community. The responsibility of creating something meaningful every week began to feel more like a life preserver with each passing issue.

As the year progressed, so did the paper and its healing editor. The community gathered around both in that particular kind of Quadra magic: a flurry of kindness, contribution, encouragement, and care, until it became difficult to tell who was carrying whom.

All the while, she’s been busy building this little paper into something bigger.

What was usually a six-page paper is now routinely eight or ten pages. We’ve expanded our local reporting, introduced new features, including our much-loved Creator Spotlight series, dug deeper into the issues affecting Quadra, celebrated more of the people who make this island what it is, begun preserving some of Quadra's living history, and created more ways for our community to take part in the paper itself.

This year’s reporting on Strathcona Gardens and Bylaw No. 643 showed just how important that work can be. We spent more than eight months following an enormously complicated local government story, learning as we went, asking questions, digging through documents, translating what was happening into something people could actually understand, and getting information into the hands of our community when it mattered. Not to mention Melissa accidentally becoming a real journalist along the way (press pass and everything!).

Now, an ever-increasing number of you are picking up the paper for local government reporting and community news. And also? For the art, events, history, poetry, profiles, letters, photographs, wonderfully weird little stories, and all of the other things that make a community newspaper feel like the community it belongs to. You’re sending us more of your news, photos, and stories every month, and sharing which articles and editorials have meant something to you, and why. We’re totally not tearing up about it.

You’ve given us a list of reasons to keep growing and ideas for how to do it (long enough to alarm an ancient Greek scribe). We plan to keep bringing those ideas to life! You’ve asked for new features, better access, more tools, and more ways to connect with the paper. We’ve been listening, thinking, experimenting, and creating our way toward a bigger Bird’s Eye universe that reflects this community right back at itself, only brighter.

And we’re just getting started.

The Bird’s Eye will always be free to read, in print and online. Every single week it is written and edited on Quadra, printed at Inspirations in Q Cove, delivered by our exceptionally kind and reliable volunteer, and supported by a growing crew of businesses, nonprofits, organizations, and local folks who choose to advertise with us.

And, incredibly kindly, some of you have even been asking how you can donate directly to the Bird’s Eye. The answer is: yes, please! We are so touched that you want to be part of what we’re building.

If you value having an independent weekly newspaper on the island and want to help us keep growing, you can now make a contribution in whatever amount feels right.

Thank you for believing in this little paper, for reading it, sharing it, contributing to it, and helping us grow. We’re so grateful to be building the Bird’s Eye with you. 🪺✍️

Want to join our growing crew of advertisers?

We’d love to have you! Get in touch at quadrabirdseye@gmail.com and let’s chat about what we can create together.

The Bird’s Eye is an independent business, not a registered charity, so contributions are not tax-deductible.
Monthly support options are coming soon.