In 2012, Quebec was home to the longest student strike in the history of the country. From February to September, students took to the streets to fight the Quebec government’s planned increase in university tuition fees. Tens of thousands of students went on strike for months in a movement that was nicknamed the “Maple Spring” — a reference to the Arab Spring that had occurred a year earlier. The movement was poorly covered by anglophone media outside of the province, with many outlets minimizing its significance and misreporting its details.

That’s when Derrick O’Keefe and Ethan Cox first met. At the time, Ethan was covering the student strike for rabble.ca and Derrick was his editor. For many anglophones in the rest of Canada a volunteer blog that translated French articles, named Translating the Printemps Erable, and Ethan’s reporting for Rabble, were their only windows into the unfolding — and electrifying — social movement. 

Media in the rest of Canada not only misunderstood the social context and significance of what was happening in Quebec, they often got the most basic facts wrong. 

In November of that year, the Idle No More movement began — a groundbreaking grassroots movement demanding Indigenous rights, sovereignty, respect for treaties, a halt to environmental degradation, and reparations. This movement also received vastly inadequate coverage.

In the wake of both powerful social movements, and the perceived failure of mainstream media to cover them adequately, or indeed, accurately, there was a burning need for something more. Infrastructure that would be capable of explaining Quebec to Canada, or Indigenous issues to settlers, the next time a powerful social movement ripped through the country. 

Those considerations led to the founding of Ricochet in 2014. Ricochet began as a conversation between Ethan Cox and Jérémie Bédard-Wien, who served as press secretary and eventually spokesperson for the CLASSE, the expanded coalition of student unions at the heart of the strike. 

They wanted to build a bridge between Quebec and the rest of Canada. A truly bilingual outlet that could explain Quebec to Canada, and vice versa. 

As those conversations advanced in late 2013, others were brought in to what was initially a Quebec-focused project. Journalist Gabrielle Brassard-Lecours, web developer Lazlo Bonin, student leader Cloé Zawadzki-Turcotte and social media strategist Julien Royal all joined the team at different points. Although not a co-founder, Ludvic Moquin-Beaudry was an early collaborator and columnist who would later transition into an editorial role.

Around this time Derrick O’Keefe was let go from rabble after a funder complained about an article he published that was critical of their organization. This provided an opportunity to bring Derrick into the project, and expand its horizons to become a truly national media project. Derrick would go on to recruit filmmaker and Gitxaala storyteller Leena Minifie and journalist and editor Erin Seatter on the west coast, while journalist Clay Nikiforuk joined the project from Montreal. Jahanzeb Hussein, a then-graduate student and journalist who co-hosted a radio show with Derrick in Vancouver, also joined the team around this time. 

By the time the first crowdfunder was launched, the project consisted of distinct English and French editorial boards and about 10 co-founders, with many others supporting from the wings. 

Ricochet was an outlet born out of frustration at the lack of fair and accurate coverage that these burgeoning social movements received. Designed to be a bilingual outlet, with a name understood in both French and English, Ricochet would go on to report on subjects that corporate media rarely gave attention to, and explore angles often left uncovered. 

The team would expand and contract over the years, but Erin, Derrick and Ethan remained active editors for the English edition through the outlet’s first 10 years, often holding it together through sheer force of will in the face of what sometimes seemed like neverending challenges. On the French side, it was Gabrielle whose indefatigable energy kept the project running alongside both new and old collaborators.

Over the years both the English and French editions of the outlet thrived, but also grew into two distinct operations. This strained the outlet’s administrative capacity, and led to red tape and delays in approving various projects and initiatives. In 2021, the two outlets divided their operations into two distinct non-profits, with the French edition becoming Pivot Media, with Gabrielle leading as its chair. 

Despite now operating as distinct outlets, Ricochet and Pivot remain sister publications, and have an agreement allowing either party to freely translate the other’s journalism — in keeping with the original goal of facilitating the spread of information across linguistic lines. The outlets also routinely collaborate on projects, including a 2023 Airbnb investigation, and the co-management of a BIPOC fellowship program.

Anne Lagacé Dowson, a journalist, commentator and former long-time CBC radio host, is the chair of Ricochet’s board. Although her current role as chair would come later, she was a supporter, contributor and cheerleader for the outlet from its early days.

The board is a “small, vital little group that tries to keep the ship on course,” Anne explained. “I was always supportive from the beginning.” 

Fundraising challenges and groundbreaking solutions

The team needed start-up funds, and decided to take a chance and launch a new kind of campaign using an online crowdfunding site — something widely done today, but pioneering at the time. 

Although at the time Kickstarter was the most widely-known such platform, the team decided to go with a lesser known competitor with more advantageous fees — Indiegogo. 

The crowdfunder was a big success, the largest Canadian crowdfunding campaign ever at that point, and it gave Ricochet the boost it needed to get off the ground. 

Through mostly small donations, averaging around $20, the team ended up raising $86,000, blowing past the initial $75,000 target. 

It was the proof of concept they needed.

“That’s how Ricochet was launched and given the platform to grow — individual people who wanted to see media done differently,” said Andrea Houston, Ricochet’s managing editor. “Many of those donors are still the foundation of our support today.”

Derrick adds that “The founders were all young enough and kind of foolish enough to start a new outlet before we had raised enough money. We didn’t have any big funder, certainly no investor. I was in my 30s, but I think all the other key people in founding Ricochet were in their 20s. 

“We were young and carefree enough to start a whole outlet with $80,000 from a crowdfunder.”

However, in a media landscape dominated by legacy outlets, Ricochet still faced enormous challenges. 

From its inception, one of Ricochet’s goals was to fairly pay its journalists, amidst a growing trend in the industry that saw many underpaid. To accomplish this goal Ricochet’s editorial team agreed to make a tradeoff: they wouldn’t pay themselves so they could focus scarce resources on paying writers. Securing financial stability, as well as establishing a foothold in the industry, were no easy feats. 

In late 2014, Ricochet published an article that detailed Canada’s controversial arms deal with Saudi Arabia. It was among the first to break the story, beating even the largest legacy outlets in reporting on the deal. The piece was published in French just after the official launch of Ricochet’s website, and marked one of the independent outlet’s initial successes. 

By the end of that year, Ricochet had assembled a group of founding editors that would cover the various bases of reporting it set out to do. During its very first days, Ricochet’s current managing editor recalls receiving a call from Ethan asking her if she’d be interested in freelancing for the then relatively unheard-of outlet. Having worked as a reporter at Xtra, Andrea’s journalism focused largely on various human rights issues, and so she contributed a few LGBTQ-focused stories to the emerging outlet.

Then, years later in 2022, Andrea came on board as managing editor, just before Ricochet marked its anniversary year. “It’s certainly a wonderful full circle moment to now come back eight years later as managing editor at this critical moment in Ricochet’s history, and a most challenging time for Canadian journalism,” she said.

Jahanzeb Hussein was a graduate student at the time of Ricochet’s launch, and had been working in Vancouver, B.C. on community radio projects. It was there that he met Derrick, working together on a Friday morning radio show called Media Mornings. Increasingly close collaborators, it didn’t take long before Derrick invited Jahanzeb to join the Ricochet team. 

“At that time, I was a young student, so I think I had less of an understanding of the media landscape as some of the others. There was a lot of excitement for me,” said Jahanzeb, reflecting. His interest in global affairs expanded Ricochet’s coverage. 

Prioritizing Indigenous journalism

Having seen how poorly the Idle No More movement was covered in the mainstream, representing Indigenous issues and amplifying Indigenous voices was a priority of Ricochet’s from the beginning. 

In 2014, Leena Minifie was brought on as the editor of the Indigenous Reporting Fund, which sought to prioritize the research and writing of Indigenous journalists. “Ricochet founders were always thinking about how to increase Indigenous coverage, and wanted to be able to represent different marginalized voices,” said Leena. “I was brought on to be the editor (of that fund), as well as to reach out to folks and recruit new talent, and be the editor of those stories.”

Leena brought on Jerome Turner, who she had met while living in Hazleton, B.C. He started covering Indigenous issues on a freelance basis, like pipelines being forced through burial grounds, and the bursting of Mount Polley Dam in 2014. 

“One of the things that I really liked about Ricochet was just to be able to have my own voice,” Jerome said, adding that other outlets didn’t give him this opportunity. 

The coverage Turner did of Mount Polley is one of Leena’s proudest moments during her time at Ricochet. Reflecting on it, she said: “Nobody had these firsthand accounts besides maybe one big mainstream station, and nobody was really talking to First Nations voices about how devastating the impact was.” Alongside Jerome, Minifie also worked with a wide roster of freelancers, including journalist Mikelle Sasakamoose and investigative journalist Martha Troian, who covered Indigenous and environmental issues. 

By 2015, seen as a high point for environmental movements across Canada, Canadians were increasingly demanding more and better coverage of the climate crisis from news outlets. Opposition to the Energy East pipeline was strong, particularly in Quebec, and led to a nationwide rise in environmental activism. Ricochet responded with in-depth coverage, following the proposed pipeline, and exposing contradictions within the NDP’s environmental policies. 

During this time, one of Ricochet’s objectives was to bring together voices from Indigenous communities across the country who were opposing various pipeline developments in their own provinces. That year, Ricochet held a speaking tour in B.C. where groups against pipelines on the West Coast hosted speakers from Quebec. They discussed similar developments happening on the East Coast.

“I remember thinking Ricochet was doing a good job in putting things that were happening in different regions of the country together, so people could sort of see the full picture,” recalls Derrick O’Keefe.

In 2015 and 2016 Ricochet again expanded its coverage of Indigenous issues. The team also started advocating for press freedom during the Muskrat falls protests and covering land defense actions in Unist’ot’en in 2015. Ricochet published exclusive video coverage of the Indigenous occupation of INAC headquarters in 2016, and it was then that Leena brought on Ossie Michelin, an Inuit storyteller, who wrote about the Labrador Inuit, and how vulnerable populations in the north are increasingly impacted by the climate crisis.

Years after working with journalist Cara McKenna on MMIWG stories and Indigenous opposition to pipelines, Ricochet now regularly works with Cara as part of an ongoing editorial partnership with IndigiNews — a relationship has only gotten stronger over the years. 

It’s a collaboration that has gone on to co-publish critical reporting that otherwise would not have been possible. 

That partnership often means working with award-winning journalist Brandi Morin, now a staff journalist with Ricochet, whose on-the-ground coverage of Indigenous-led resistance to resource extraction projects has produced some of the most extraordinary and important journalism in Canada, including the short documentary Killer Water, which won the 2024 Canadian Hillman prize.

Derrick said a key coverage area for him has always been the often underrepresented complexities surrounding resource extraction. 

“I wanted to tell more climate-related stories, and produce journalism that goes a little deeper on some of these issues than just ‘pipelines are bad,’” he said. “There are First Nations that are invested in, or getting benefits from, fossil fuel industries, and there are different points of views on this within First Nations communities as well. There’s a lot of important reporting that needs to be done.”

Ricochet contributed a key piece of reporting to the national conversation in 2020 with a legal explainer that unpacked a landmark Supreme Court decision and ultimately what’s at the root of the Wet’suwet’en people’s fight for their land and water.

Ricochet kept covering Wet’suwet’en, and the fight by land defenders against the CGL pipeline, sending Indigenous journalists to the remote community at great cost. It has remained a core beat ever since. 

One of Ethan’s proudest moments was a 2018 investigation in which they found that a group of Canadian soldiers were behind a “white supremacist military surplus store.” Through a deep online investigation, Ricochet exclusively revealed the names of the store’s operators, and their roles in the military, and as staffers for conservative politicians.

“That story did what Ricochet does best — it held power to account,” Ethan said. 

Ethan said the investigation was picked up widely by other outlets, even leading to a scene where a scrum of reporters chased the then-premier of Alberta, peppering him with questions about the story. It was an indication of how consequential their reporting could be, and the impact it could have on the national conversation. 

Leena said her time with Ricochet marked a new chapter in her career. “Serving as an editor, being on the board of Ricochet, deciding how things are moving, and being given agency over the Indigenous Reporting Fund was key to my career. I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in, wouldn’t have met the people I’ve met, or be trusted by so many journalists and folks for storytelling without my Ricochet time,” she said.

When the world shut down for the COVID-19 pandemic, Ricochet covered Quebec’s poor response to the crisis, along with other stories that legacy media paid little attention to. 

In 2020, Jerome Turner won the Canadian Association of Journalists’ Charles Bury President’s Award for his Wet’suwet’en coverage. He reported from inside the RCMP raid on the territory, and was detained for more than eight hours in the process, even being held at gunpoint by militarized officers carrying automatic weapons. 

Jerome’s detainment was one in a series of violations of press freedom that took place on Wet’suwet’en territory. “I had such great support from Ethan and Derrick and everybody at Ricochet, making sure that the lawyers were in touch with the RCMP saying: ‘Hey, what are you doing trying to prevent journalists from doing their jobs?’ and they always relented just at the last second,” recalls Jerome. 

The following year, Mohawk activist and artist from the Kanehsatà:ke Nation, Ellen Gabriel began bringing her deeply personal and powerful perspective to Ricochet, discussing legacies of colonialism, reconciliation, and resistance. 

Beat reporting from the ground with Brandi Morin 

In 2021, rising star freelance Indigenous journalist Brandi Morin travelled to B.C. to report on the growing resistance to old growth logging in the ancient Fairy Creek forest, located in Pacheedaht First Nation territory, northeast of Port Renfrew on Vancouver Island. 

“As a Native journalist who wants to tell Native stories, Ricochet gives me the freedom and support to do that very important work,” Brandi said. “It has been absolutely liberating to have that support.

“Few outlets in Canada are actually covering these stories. At many Indigenous frontlines, we have been the only media covering the issue. And we frequently find our coverage leads mainstream media to pick up the story.”

Brandi’s on-the-ground coverage consistently amplifies Indigenous opposition to resource extraction projects and efforts to protect their ancestral lands for future generations.

Her coverage for Ricochet has received just about every major award in the industry, both in Canada and internationally.

In 2024, Brandi Morin and Geordie Day won the prestigious Canadian Hillman Prize for their documentary Killer Water: The Toxic Legacy Of Canada’s Oil Sands Industry For Indigenous Communities. “Killer Water is a story of greed, corruption, and willful government neglect,” the description reads. “Journalist Brandi Morin and cinematographer Geordie Day expose the realities of an industry that is creating environmental refugees in Canada.”

Canadian journalist Garvia Bailey presented the award at the Hillman Canada ceremony in Toronto.

“Brandi, Geordie, and their team took the time necessary to collect stories with care and compose a documentary that is beautifully shot, carefully researched and reported, edited and told with clarity and emotional heft,” she said.

Managing editor Andrea Houston joined Brandi at both the Canadian and New York ceremonies.

“I’m extremely proud of my team – Brandi and Geordie and Ethan and all of our partners at IndigiNews and The Real News Network,” Andrea said. “It was a pretty fantastic moment.”  

In January 2024, Brandi was arrested while covering a police raid on an Indigenous encampment in Edmonton. It marked another landmark fight for press freedom by the team at Ricochet.

Ethan and Andrea dropped everything and turned their attention to Brandi’s case, securing a pro bono lawyer and near-unanimous industry support. They recruited nearly every single press freedom organization, including the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters without Borders, Canadian Association of Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, and Journalists for Human Rights, and organized a press conference. With Brent Jolly from the CAJ, Andrea and Ethan also published an op-ed in the Globe and Mail, and picked up Globe and Mail coverage from columnist Tanya Talaga and feature writer Jana Pruden. The pressure campaign was ultimately successful, and all charges were dropped soon after. 

In recent years, Ricochet has continued its tradition of rigorous investigations on issues of public interest. 

In 2021, Ricochet was awarded the Michener Deacon Fellowship to support an in-depth public-service investigative journalism project with an award of $45,000 to fund a study on police misconduct across Canada, looking at instances of alleged misconduct by officers. 

After 10 years of award-winning and groundbreaking work, there’s a lot to be proud of. 

“I think what I’m most proud of is our continued existence and our growth and the fact that after 10 years, we still exist, we’re getting bigger, and we’re getting stronger. And we’re really trying to pioneer a different model along with other outlets in our sector of doing journalism, and one that increasingly resonates with the public,” said Ethan. 

Despite our successes, Ricochet is always teetering on the edge of financial ruin. That’s just the reality of operating a non-profit media outlet in our current hellscape of an industry. If you care about the type of journalism showcased above, and want us to do more of it, please consider making a donation. Thank you!