Beloved Readers,
When we started The Beaverton we were just a bunch of smartasses trying to make each other laugh during our weekly meeting on the second floor of a disgusting pub behind Honest Ed’s (they gave us 10% off chicken wings). We never dreamed our jokes would one day be read by millions of Canadians, or that we’d get to write a tv show and a book. We just wanted to make our Stephen Harper and Degrassi jokes (it was 2010 ok?)
Nearly 15 years later that pub is a condo and the internet has changed. Our two main traffic drivers: Facebook and Twitter (we will never call it X) have algorithms that suppress political satire and do everything they can to stop people leaving their website to go to ours. Online advertising rates have plummeted. Instagram throttles any post with a link to our merch store. We’ve mostly survived on one-off paypal or interac donations from many of you kind folks, which we’re so grateful for. But unfortunately that won’t do it anymore.
What hasn’t changed though is how much we love making jokes about our stupid, wonderful country. We want to keep going into our 15th year. We want to continue calling out BS and hypocrisy when we see it (and there may be a lot of that soon if current polls are to be believed). We want to keep paying our writers, both the original chicken wing crew and those who have joined since, a fair rate for their articles. But to do that, we’re going to need some help.
So we’re launching a Patreon: www.patreon.com/thebeaverton
For a small monthly contribution you will support our little rag-tag team of comedy writers and satirists (we are still 100% owned by our original founders, so please tell your Uncle we don’t work for the CBC or the Liberal Party). You will help us continue to publish and pay our writers. And if things work out, we may even be able to write more articles a week, and bring back The Podcast and Videos.
In exchange you can get awesome perks like exclusive content, free merch, a signed copy of our book and much more! As the Patreon community grows we hope to involve you in our process more, by weighing in on what real stories we should put our satirical spin on and working with us to find cool ways to expand what it is we do beyond just satirical news stories.
We hope you’ll consider supporting us, though if it’s not financially feasible for you right now we totally understand. Spreading the word by telling friends & family who enjoy our stuff is also greatly appreciated. Either way thank you for reading all this, and sorry it wasn’t funny (except for the Uncle bit. That was ok right?). We hate asking but we have no alternative. It’s this or we shut down.
If you have any questions please feel free to email us at staff@thebeaverton.com
Yours In Satire,
The Beaverton Editors
