About Vancouver Is Awesome

Vancouver Is Awesome

Vancouver Is Awesome is a Vancouver-based digital publication covering the city's news, lifestyle, culture, restaurants, and events. Founded in 2008 by Bob Kronbauer as a defiantly positive antidote to the doom-and-gloom of traditional news, it was acquired by Glacier Media in September 2017, with Kronbauer staying on as Publisher and Editor-in-Chief. Today it is one of Metro Vancouver's most-read digital outlets — an award-winning publication with one of the largest and most engaged social media presences in the region, and a member of the Local News Collective, Canada's largest digital local news network.

Overview

Vancouver Is Awesome publishes Vancouver news with an enthusiast's eye: local news, lifestyle and culture stories, restaurant coverage, travel, videos, and the "everything happening in the city" content that keeps readers up to date on their city. The editorial voice is upbeat but not naive — the site covers the housing crisis and bad news alongside the awesome stuff, but with a sensibility that assumes Vancouver, for all its problems, is worth celebrating. The publication's tagline-era promise — to share the great stuff about the city — remains its organizing principle.

History

Vancouver Is Awesome was founded in 2008 by Bob Kronbauer, a Vancouver freelancer who started the site off the side of his desk while working freelance jobs. The founding story is disarmingly simple: Kronbauer was happy to be back in Vancouver after time away, working from his home office, looking out at the mountains, and thinking about how the city's media covered the place he loved. The "#nofuncity" discourse was in the air — the perennial complaint that Vancouver was boring, expensive, and no fun, a city that took itself too seriously to enjoy itself — and the news was, as Kronbauer put it, doom and gloom: crime, crisis, and complaint. "Man, this place is awesome," he thought, looking at the mountains from his window. "Why isn't there somewhere that just shares all the great stuff?"

The answer was to build it himself. Kronbauer would finish his freelance work, then turn to the site — curating the positive, the interesting, the delightful about Vancouver. The early operation was tiny: Kronbauer and one other employee, working from the home office with the mountain view. But the concept resonated: in a media environment saturated with negativity, a publication devoted to what was awesome about the city felt like a revelation.

The early site was an explicit reaction: where traditional outlets led with crime and crisis, Vancouver Is Awesome led with the positive. Kronbauer has described the founding formula as merging his interest in Vancouver with the kind of uplifting content he sought out online — cute, fuzzy, fun stuff as a palate cleanser from the news. "It was initially only like, if it's not super happy and positive, it's not making it on to the site," he recalled. "We got criticism for it, but we weren't a news site at that time. We were a lifestyle publication."

The site grew slowly and organically — "slow, organic growth is such a safer way to build a business," Kronbauer has said — from a one-man operation (Kronbauer plus one employee) into a significant digital publication. The growth was audience-led: readers shared the positive stories, the social following compounded, and the site's reputation as Vancouver's cheerful chronicler attracted both readers and advertisers. In September 2017, Kronbauer sold Vancouver Is Awesome to Glacier Media, the Vancouver-based media company that owned many of the city's weekly papers — the Vancouver Courier, the Westender, Business in Vancouver, the North Shore News. The sale was a notable digital-media transaction: an independent site, built from a home office, acquired by one of Western Canada's largest publishers. Kronbauer stayed on as Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, and the Glacier partnership transformed the site: "We do stuff about the housing crisis. We do stuff about bad news. It is what it is. We do more of the Awesome stuff about the city, stuff to do, stuff to check out, whatever, but the news volume has increased. The news gets more traffic too. We're sort of more well-rounded now. The way that happened was through the partnership at Glacier."

Kronbauer's own profile grew alongside the site: he became the Leo Award-nominated host of BC Was Awesome, the Telus Optik series in which he traveled the province rediscovering its history through larger-than-life characters and fascinating places — a television extension of the site's founding sensibility, and proof that the "awesome" concept could travel beyond Vancouver.

Content

Vancouver Is Awesome's content spans the full range of city coverage: local news (development, city politics, transit, the issues that animate Vancouver's public conversation — including the housing crisis that defines the city's politics), lifestyle and culture (the arts scene, neighbourhood profiles, the outdoor culture of mountains and ocean), food and restaurants (openings, closings, reviews, the dining scene), travel (getaways from the city, the province's attractions), and videos. The editorial mix balances the awesome — the stuff to do, the places to check out, the reasons to love the city — with the news the city needs: the policy debates, the development battles, the bad news that can't be ignored. The evolution from pure positivity to well-rounded news reflects the site's maturation: still awesome-first, but no longer awesome-only.

Coverage and Audience

Vancouver Is Awesome covers Metro Vancouver — a region of 2.6 million people, Canada's third-largest metropolitan area, and one of its most dynamic, diverse, and expensive. The audience is Vancouverites who love their city despite its challenges: the young professionals, the outdoor enthusiasts, the food lovers, the newcomers discovering the region. The site's social media presence extends its reach dramatically: with over 195,000 Facebook likes, more than 145,000 Twitter followers, and 89,000 Instagram followers, it commands one of the largest and most engaged social followings of any Metro Vancouver publication.

The Local News Collective

Vancouver Is Awesome is part of the Local News Collective (LNC) — Glacier Media's digital local news network, initially conceived in 2018, which brings together the company's community websites (including the Victoria Times Colonist, Castanet, Business in Vancouver, and the North Shore News) into Canada's largest digital local news network. By its fifth year of operation, the LNC recorded over 250 million monthly page views — a scale that gives its member publications the audience and advertising reach to sustain digital journalism. (Glacier Media renamed itself Lodestar Media on May 1, 2025.)

Ownership

Vancouver Is Awesome was founded by Bob Kronbauer in 2008. In September 2017, it was acquired by Glacier Media (now Lodestar Media), the Vancouver-based media and information-services company. Kronbauer remained as Publisher and Editor-in-Chief following the acquisition, continuing to lead the publication he founded.

Digital Presence

Vancouver Is Awesome publishes at vancouverisawesome.com — a domain registered in February 2008, making the site one of Canada's longest-running city publications, with more than 18 years of continuous operation. The website is complemented by the social media presence that has been central to the brand since its founding: Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, and other platforms carry the site's content to hundreds of thousands of followers. The digital-first, social-native approach — building audience on the platforms where Vancouverites actually spend their time — has been the publication's strategy from the start, and the source of its enduring relevance in a crowded media market.