About Georgia Straight

Georgia Straight

The Georgia Straight is Vancouver's alternative weekly newspaper — the voice of the city's counterculture since May 1967, now owned by the Overstory Media Group. Founded as an underground newspaper by Pierre Coupey, Milton Acorn, Dan McLeod, Stan Persky and others, it grew from a ten-cent biweekly into one of Canada's most influential alternative weeklies: investigative journalism, arts and culture coverage, and the progressive conscience of the West Coast. It publishes in print weekly and digitally at straight.com.

Overview

For nearly six decades, the Georgia Straight has been Vancouver's alternative: the paper of the counterculture, the arts scene, the activists and the progressives — the counterweight to the city's corporate dailies. It is one of the only 1960s underground newspapers still publishing in North America — a survivor of the era of the Village Voice and the underground press, and a living link to the Vancouver of Expo-era idealism. For generations of Vancouverites, the Straight on the newsstand — and now on the phone — has been the city's conscience: the paper that asks the questions the dailies won't, that covers the scenes the dailies miss, that speaks for the Vancouver the establishment would rather ignore. Its pages carry investigative reporting, political commentary, music and film coverage, restaurant reviews and the city's most-read alternative voice.

The Straight's distinction is its longevity: one of the few 1960s underground newspapers to survive into the 21st century — still publishing, still independent in spirit, still the paper that annoys the establishment. Its readership once reached 804,000 weekly readers (2009), with per-issue circulation of 119,971 copies (January 2011, per VAC audit) — numbers that made it one of the most-read alternative weeklies in North America, the free paper in the boxes on every commercial street in the city.

History

The Georgia Straight was christened over beer at the Cecil Hotel in April 1967 — the name a play on the weather forecasters' gale warnings for the Georgia Strait. The first issue appeared May 5, 1967, cost a dime, and was a biweekly. On May 12, Dan McLeod was taken away in a paddy wagon and jailed for three hours for "investigation of vagrancy." College Printers refused to print the second issue — an alternative printer was found.

The paper grew rapidly with Vancouver's counterculture — the Vietnam War draft dodgers and military deserters seeking refuge in neutral Canada, the hippies of Kitsilano and the West End, the activists of Gastown. This exodus was the largest politically motivated migration from the United States since the United Empire Loyalists — and the Straight was its newspaper: the voice of the besieged youth culture, the flag of the resistance. By October 1967 circulation was 60,000 every two weeks; by August 1968 it was weekly. In 1972, original staff members left to publish the competitor bi-weekly The Grape.

Dan McLeod — the poet, the UBC mathematics graduate, the man jailed for vagrancy in the paper's first week — became the paper's owner and publisher for decades: a major cultural force in British Columbia, the steward of the Straight's independence through the decades of corporate consolidation that swallowed so many alternative papers. His son, general manager Matt McLeod, negotiated the 2020 sale. McLeod's hope, expressed at the sale, was job security for the staff — the paper had, in his words, 'had problems with trying to stay running,' hit by the same advertising decline that has devastated print since the rise of digital. In January 2020, the paper was sold to Media Central Corporation for $1.25 million (weeks after the same company's acquisition of Toronto's Now). After Media Central filed for bankruptcy, the Straight was acquired in September 2022 by the Overstory Media Group.

Content

The Georgia Straight's content is the alternative weekly's mix: investigative journalism, political commentary, arts and culture, music, film, food and the city's alternative life. Its investigative reporting has held power to account for decades — the city hall exposés, the development-industry investigations, the environmental reporting that a resource province's alternative press must do. Its cultural coverage is the city's alternative guide: the music venues, the indie bands, the theatre, the galleries, the restaurants that the mainstream misses. The paper's film and music critics have shaped Vancouver's cultural conversation for generations. Its investigative reporting has held power to account for decades; its cultural coverage — the music scene, the restaurants, the festivals — is Vancouver's alternative guide.

The paper's opinion pages are the progressive conscience of the city: columnists, editorials, the letters that debate Vancouver's future — the housing crisis, the overdose emergency, the development wars, the reconciliation with the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh on whose unceded territories the city stands. The Straight's pages have hosted the city's great debates for six decades. Its annual Best of Vancouver readers' poll — the restaurants, the shops, the people the city loves — is a city institution, the alternative establishment's establishment.

Coverage and Audience

The Straight serves Metro Vancouver — the city's progressives, its artists, its activists, its young readers, the neighbourhoods from Commercial Drive to Kitsilano that are the paper's natural habitat. Its influence runs through the city's institutions: the politicians who read it to know what the activists think, the developers who fear its investigations, the restaurateurs who covet its reviews, the musicians who need its coverage, the activists who need its pages. Its audience once numbered 804,000 weekly readers; at the 2020 sale, the paper claimed 2.7 million print readers and 1.8 million online readers.

The paper's influence exceeds its circulation: its investigations move city hall, its endorsements matter, its cultural coverage shapes the scene. In a city of corporate dailies, the Straight is the independent voice — the paper the city argues with, and the paper the city can't do without.

Ownership

The Georgia Straight is owned by the Overstory Media Group, which acquired it in September 2022 after Media Central Corporation's bankruptcy. The 2020–2022 interlude — the $1.25-million sale, the cannabis-media company's ambitions, the bankruptcy — was the paper's brush with the consolidators; the Overstory acquisition returned it to independent alternative-weekly ownership. Through it all, the Straight kept publishing — the weekly rhythm unbroken since 1968, the voice unchanged since 1967. Founder Dan McLeod owned and published the paper from its 1967 founding until the January 2020 sale to Media Central for $1.25 million.

Digital Presence

The Straight publishes digitally at straight.com — the alternative weekly's full content online: news, arts, food, the Best of Vancouver, the archives of six decades of countercultural journalism, the digital home of the paper that has covered Vancouver's alternative life since 1967. Its social media channels distribute the paper's journalism to Vancouver's progressive readers.

As of 2026, the Georgia Straight continues to publish — weekly in print, continuously online — nearly 60 years after the 1967 founding, still Vancouver's alternative, still annoying the establishment. From the ten-cent underground biweekly to the digital alternative weekly, it has outlasted the movements that birthed it, the competitors that challenged it and the owners that bought and lost it — still the Straight, still Vancouver's own alternative, still and always the alternative, still and always Vancouver's own alternative voice, still the Straight, still standing, still Vancouver's own paper, still and always.

The numbers tell the survival story: 119,971 copies per issue (January 2011, VAC-audited), 804,000 weekly readers (2009) — one of North America's most-read alternative weeklies. From the 1972 split that birthed The Grape to the $1.25-million 2020 sale, Media Central's bankruptcy and Overstory's 2022 rescue, the Straight keeps publishing: the ten-cent underground biweekly that became Vancouver's institution.